The right to work is essential for realizing other human rights. The right to work includes equal opportunities to employment and the rights to freely chose work, not to be deprived of work and to decent, safe, secure and paid work. Core (non-derogable) obligations that are applicable even during emergencies include ensuring nondiscrimination and equal protection of employment, as well as of the right of access to employment, especially for disadvantaged and marginalized individuals and groups. Right to work Examples of impacts on women: • During the COVID-19 pandemic, extraordinary measures that have required working from home have coincided with other social distancing measures, such as the temporary closure of nurseries, schools and other services deemed “non-essential”. The impact has significantly constrained women’s right to work. Before the health crisis, women shouldered the greater share of domestic responsibilities, and during the pandemic they have been expected to, and have continued to, undertake domestic chores while also working from home and adding the new responsibility of schooling children. The immediate impact has been a loss in women’s productivity. In the United Kingdom for instance, in two-parent households, mothers worked during lockdown without interruption an average of 35 per cent of the paid-work hours of fathers (before the pandemic, mothers did 60 per cent of the number of uninterrupted work hours that the average father did). Furthermore, of parents who were in paid work before lockdown measures, “mothers [were] one-and-a-half times more likely than fathers to have either lost their job or quit since the lockdown began. They [were] also more likely to have been furloughed. In all, mothers who were in paid work in February [were] nine percentage points less likely to be currently working for pay (either remotely or on-site) than fathers.” This situation has been characteristic for the OSCE region. Absence from work and lost productivity are expected to have long-term effects on women’s careers; they are likely to be disadvantaged in terms of earnings and potential promotions – both of which are important aspects of the right to work. 54