Hello, welcome to Business Weekly with Lucy Burton.

Next Thursday marks the first anniversary of the World Health Organisation officially labelling COVID-19 a pandemic.

In the year since that announcement was made, over 2.5 million people have died from the disease.

Global unemployment rose by 33 million. Social gatherings have been largely forbidden,

and millions of children have had their education disrupted.

So in today's program, we're just going to take some time to reflect on how all of this has affected us.

We'll be speaking to mothers, to nurses, to bosses and to teens.

And we're going to begin by hearing from Ninos Genchi in Georgia in Eastern Europe, who lost her job as a travel guide.

My name is Ninoz Genzi. For the past three years, I have been working. her job as a travel guide.

My name is Ninoj Genty.

For the past three years, I have been working as a guide for a tourism company.

I had a very good job and solid income.

But last May, when the tourism season was just about to begin, the pandemic started.

Now I only have my pension as income. It's about $75 US dollars a month and this situation is very difficult. My other family members, they

also suffered. My son was working at a theatre and it stopped working so he's only been paid

half of his salary.

Ninos' story is echoed by thousands of others around the world,

as women's jobs are being disproportionately affected by the pandemic,

and they're losing their jobs at a faster rate than men.

This is partly because of existing gender inequalities in society, and we'll get to that later. But it's also because the parts of the economy that had to close to keep the virus at bay

were hospitality and retail, and those sectors employ high numbers of women. A report by the

accountant's Pricewaterhouse Cooper found that if no action is taken, more women will leave employment permanently and the pandemic will have reversed the progress made towards gender parity in the workplace over the last few years.

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