Study shows women are more likely to be employed in roles such as social care, nursing and pharmacy

Low-paid women are at high risk of exposure to coronavirus as they are more likely to be in jobs such as social care, nursing and pharmacy, a study has found.

Out of 3.2 million workers employed in the highest-risk roles, about 2.5 million are women, according to Autonomy, an economics thinktank. As many as a million of those workers – who are considered to be at highest risk because they normally work closely with the public and people with diseases and infections – are also among the lowest paid, according to the study.

The study comes as thousands of retired nurses are being urged by the government to return from retirement to help in the NHS fight against Covid-19, and care homes call for recruits to come forward to fill vacancies left by workers who are self-isolating or sick. Eighty-nine percent of nurses and 84% of care workers are women.

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“This pandemic has exposed deep inequalities at the heart of our economy,” said Will Stronge, the director of Autonomy. “Frontline key workers are part of the foundations that make our society tick: we rely on them to go to work, to keep basic services running and to care for us.

“This study has shown not only that many of these occupations are at a high risk of exposure to the Covid-19 virus, but that are often paid at poverty wages and are carried out overwhelmingly by women. It is about time we pay these workers properly for the valuable work they do.”

Autonomy plotted 273 different UK-based occupations according to numbers employed in each, the level of physical proximity that each job requires and the exposure to diseases or infections that each job entails.

The impact of the disproportionate exposure of women may be offset by emerging evidence internationally suggesting women are less likely to test positive for the disease and less likely to die than men. In Italy, men have accounted for 71% of deaths and in Spain, data released last Thursday suggested twice as many men as women have died.

Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson, the director of the Women’s Budget Group, which analyses the impacts of policies on women, said: “We’d known that workers on the frontline at most risk of Covid-19 were often badly paid and mainly women, but these figures are still a shock.

“It can’t be right that many of those at the sharp end, providing services under pressure and at high risk of getting sick themselves, are earning so little. Many will not even qualify for sick pay. This should be a wake-up call – we don’t just need action now, we need change in the future to properly value this essential work.”

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John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said: “With 3 million people working in jobs where there is significant social contact and hundreds of thousands of those below the poverty line, the government must provide people with the economic security to stay at home if needed.

“The fact that so many people working in jobs with significant social contact are key workers shows that the government must do everything it can to support, value, and protect these workers, including urgently getting personal protective equipment to them.”