Covid-19 has brought a tsunami on the social ,economic, cultural systems , specially affecting the women belonging to the lower income group. In India where women are culturally marginalized, the pandemic is of greater concern. The Covid-19 scenario has vividly shown to the whole world the fact that the world’s economy and the maintenance of our routine lives is dependent on the unpaid and invisible labour of women employees.
The health workers are the ones who are a higher risk due to pandemic. In South-East Asian Region , around 70% of the front line workers are women , as compared to 67% of the total number in the world. It has been observed that the number of women being affected by the pandemic may take a steep rise in the near future. The stress of managing and treating the infection well as impacted the mental health of the frontline workers , specially women employees. Mobility restriction have further increased the exposure time towards women, leading to increase in suicidal cases, domestic abuse .This points out the male psychological distress going on , adversely affecting women’s psychological well-being . Past incidents have indicated that health resources are accessible only to limited women employees ,but because of the pandemic there has been no access to health and sexual services like HIV medication ,contraceptive pills and safe abortion . Women on a average spend 4.1 hours/day on unpaid care and domestic work, compared to 1.7 hours/day for men. Women’s unpaid contribution to healthcare equates to 2.35% of global GDP .
Analysis done show that women count for 70% for the total workers in health and social sectors, and around 50% of them are unpaid. The recent data have shown that women spend thrice as many hours as men in unpaid care and domestic work, limiting their access to decent work. The global gender pay gap is stuck at 16% with women paid up to 35% less than men in some countries. Women aged 25-34 years globally are 25% more likely than men to live in extreme poverty.
Global lockdown have resulted in the lockdown of women autonomy , practising them as second class and holding them back in our societies. Economic pressures on family are putting children, particularly women in a vulnerable state, and have restrained them from essential services. The burden of care and responsibility of family members staying inside the house have made the situation all the more vulnerable for the women. The pandemic has put restrictions on the freedom of movement of people worldwide, affecting the freedom of expression of women.
Transforming inequities of unpaid workers to a new, inclusive economy would work for everyone and designing socio-cultural plans with intentional focus on lives of women. Even though a lot of women are working on the Pandemic, but they have little to no say in the policies. There is an urgent need for sex-disaggregated data to see and understand how women employees are affected by the virus.
International Journal of Research (IJR) 