• When “essential workers” are exempted from emergency measures, such as lockdowns and travel restrictions, women, who make up a large number of non-health related “essential workers” (e.g., supermarket cashiers, cleaners, pharmacists and teachers and childcare workers) may be deprived of their right to decent, safe and secure work. Many of these are low-paid and low-skilled jobs, and concerns have been raised about whether women have had access to adequate PPE and other health and safety measures (such as places and time to wash their hands) or the empowerment to make such demands. Potentially, the designation of such work as “critical” or “essential”, without appropriate safeguards, could put women’s rights to decent work and to health at risk. Recommended actions to protect women’s rights Emergency measures should include risk assessments concerning the closure of “non-essential” workplaces, identifying potential differential impacts on women. Any negative impacts should then be mitigated through social protection schemes and benefits. Protection from job and income loss, instituted during emergencies, should cover the full spectrum of “women’s work”, including part-time work, self-employment, seasonal and home-based work. Informal work performed by women should be recognized as a form of employment that is restricted when emergency measures are in place. Social protection should, therefore, be afforded to women who work in the informal sector. The right to decent and safe working conditions should be protected for women who are in jobs considered “essential” during states of emergency. The right to work should also include respect for the right to refuse to work when such conditions are not met. OBLIGATORY WORKING FROM HOME As part of emergency orders to limit movement, many jobs – those that were deemed “non-essential” – have been locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic. In general, while more women work in sectors that have been closed (such as those mentioned in the preceding section), men have been less able to transfer to working-from-home schemes, because they are overrepresented in fields that cannot ensure social distancing – such as manufacturing, construction and home repairs. The pattern across the OSCE region is that women have been working from home more often than men. Of respondents to a survey conducted in Europe and Central Asia, almost half of women and a quarter of men were working from home during lockdown periods.187 187 The data refer to ten European and Central Asian countries. UN Women, “The Impact of Covid-19 on Women’s and Men’s Lives and Livelihoods in Europe and Central Asia: Preliminary Results from a Rapid Gender Assessment”, op. cit., note 97, p. 16. 53