SDIS21: Society & the Future of Work - What are the challenges in making society and work more sustainable?

In the decade leading up to 2020, we saw significant, albeit slow, progress towards making education and work more equitable and inclusive.

Then, COVID-19 hit – and “what took a decade to achieve unravelled within a matter of months,” wrote Forum Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab and then OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría.

The pandemic made it more difficult for everyone to obtain decent work, education and basic rights – especially vulnerable groups. Lockdowns and school closures meant more children out of school and women taking on a greater burden of unpaid work at home. Even in the world’s most developed nations, racial minorities were far more likely to experience job loss and illness. The LGBTQI+ community suffered from “limited access to and de-prioritization of healthcare services, stigma and discrimination.” All of these groups were subjected to more violence.

“There is no time to waste to put in place comprehensive policies to avoid creating a lost generation and greater disadvantages for those who were already impeded from full access to learning and earning,” said Gurría and Schwab.

As the recovery continues, we must work to close these gaps. And doing so requires putting these vulnerable groups at the center of recovery - a key topic at the Forum's virtual Sustainable Development Impact Summit on 20-23 September.

“We cannot build back better after COVID-19 without gender equality,” wrote Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Undersecretary-General and Executive Director of UN WOMEN. “Specifically, we must place women at the center of our economic recovery. Now is the moment for leaders to publicly commit to that work – by supporting the care economy, and equal wages and access to opportunities.”

Similarly, we need to involve youth: “The year 2021 is the time to start thinking and acting long-term to make intergenerational parity the norm and to design a society, economy and international community that cares for all people,” wrote Schwab. “Young people are also the best placed to lead this transformation.”

Eliminating disparities in access to education, skills and full participation in all levels of political, economic and public life are key to a more sustainable and inclusive world. This depends on achieving targets of three SDGs:

SDG 4: Quality Education. By 2030, targets include:

SDG 5: Gender Equality, which focuses on ending all forms of discrimination, violence and harmful practices (like child marriage) against women and girls everywhere, as well as ensuring equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of political, economic and public life. This includes:

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, which promotes sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth and decent work for all. Targets include:

While there has been progress over the last decade, COVID-19 sets us back on many education, gender and work targets, according to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021.

Before the pandemic, the number of children out of primary and secondary school had been declining, from 46% and 53%, respectively, in 2010 to 82% and 85 in 2019. Participation in pre-primary education rose from 65% in 2010 to 73% in 2019.

During the pandemic, more than 90% of students worldwide have been affected by school closures.

“The pandemic is projected to cause an additional 101 million children (roughly 9% of those in primary and lower secondary school) to fall below the minimum reading proficiency threshold, increasing the total number of students falling behind to 584 million in 2020,” says the progress report. The pandemic is also expected to slow or reverse progress on early childhood education, school completion and adult education, which is necessary to access technological skills required for jobs of the future.

The pandemic threatens progress on gender equality, too. Before 2020, child marriage had been declining. However: “Over the next decade, up to 10 million more girls will be at risk of child marriage as of a result of the pandemic, in addition to the 100 million who were projected to become child brides before,” as a result of “economic shocks, school closures and interruptions in reproductive health services,” explains the progress report.

While the number of women in leadership roles continues to rise, albeit slowly, the gender gap has widened, according to the Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021.

“As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be felt, closing the global gender gap has increased by a generation from 99.5 years to 135.6 years,” says the report.

While COVID-19 has disrupted work for everyone, it’s had a disproportionate impact on women, youth and the informal sector. In 2020, youth and women saw employment losses of 8.7% and 5%, respectively, compared with 3.7% for all adults and 3.9% for men. “[T]hree quarters of informal economy workers (1.6 billion) were significantly affected by lockdown measures and/or were working in the hardest-hit sectors”; women are overrepresented in this group.