COVID-19 And Indian Women
Sahana Pradeep
On May 3, India’s COVID-19 lockdown entered its third phase. As the volatility of the situation prevails in the country, return to normalcy is still a distant possibility. PM Modi announced the first phase of the lockdown on the media on March 24, with no implications of a nationwide lockdown.
The declaration was like breaking a shell, as it was as unplanned and unprepared as it could be, putting thousands in bizarre circumstances. No state other than Kerala had any stratagem to face the lockdown, which the Left front government there implemented in a phased manner, effectively tackling both the spread of the virus and related socio-economic problems. The central government neither had a vision nor an economic package to deal with the pandemic, even when the Kerala government declared twenty thousand crores as their COVID-19 relief package. The sudden lockdown and its extension have made the lives of migrant labourers, informal sector workers, differently-abled and of women worse than before. The NDA government could not formulate economic relief according to the extension of the lockdown; nor could it provide people with any hint of how the economic crunch will be dealt with. Instead, the PM gave lengthy, hollow, ‘philosophical’ speeches, appealing to bang vessels and light lamps.
Victims of any crisis, especially health emergencies and epidemics, would more often than not, be people from the lower strata of the social ladder. Disasters and calamities are borne differently across socio-economic and gender lines, and this pandemic is also no different. It has made the lives of the working class turn upside down. With no state support and financial assistance, hundreds have even lost their lives during this lockdown, succumbing to extreme starvation. Women too, undoubtedly, belong to the lower levels of the power structure. As a group that faces multiple levels of discrimination and challenges, for women, the experience of any health emergency will naturally be ghastly. For them, it is not a matter of individual survival, but a struggle to be gone through and endured, when structural inequalities are most visible.
Economic Impacts
Seventy percent of the total women’s employment in most developing economies falls in the informal sector. In India too, 94% of the total female labour force works in the informal sector. As per the 2011 Census, 63% of the total women workers are employed in the agricultural sector; 6% in construction sector, and another 6% in wholesale and retail sectors. With limited access to any social security measures such as paid sick leave, housing allowance and insurance, they are hardly protected against dismissals as well. Such workers include domestic help, garment workers, construction workers, and rag pickers. Most of them depend on public spaces to earn a living. As the lockdown enters its third phase, their hopes to return to normalcy have been thrashed.
There is gross imbalance in the gender distribution of care work. Most domestic workers and care workers are women from (‘lower’ caste/class) colonies and slums in cities. Domestic work has never been recognised formally as ‘work’ and is considered an extension of household chores. Since it is not designated as ‘work’, there is hardly any state intervention in this arena. As human mobility is restricted, many such workers are unable to reach their workplaces. A majority of domestic workers are the breadwinners of their families, and as their labour does not fall under any ‘formal’ category, the declared economic benefits would not reach them. Chances are high that they might not even be able to get back to the same job.
The suspended supply of care workers has escalated the demand for unpaid childcare. This responsibility will obviously fall heavily on women and existing social norms will also mandate them to take it up. The additional task of taking care of the needy will reflect fluctuations in the career graph of the woman who works in a formal sector as well. As many institutions, companies and industries have directed employees to work from home, the female workforce will find it challenging to meet these demands and expectations, which would have an adverse impact on their careers and remunerations.
The Ebola pandemic and consequent quarantine measures in West Africa, during 2014-16, had had huge impacts on the economic activities of women. Post pandemic analysis showed that suspended economic activities of women had played a major role in the aggravation of poverty rates.
The COVID-19 crisis is once again revealing to us that the world’s formal economies and the maintenance of our daily lives are built on the invisible and unpaid labour of women and girls. The lockdown and quarantine will primarily disable the mobility of women and children.
The All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), in its statement, has urged the government to declare more economic packages for such workers. The monthly deposit of Rs. 500 in the Jan Dhan Yojna account declared by the government is nothing but mere tokenism. Sylvia Chant, former professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, observes that, “women comprise 60-70% of the world’s poor, with female-headed households representing ‘the poorest of poor'”.
With the lack of state support and economic schemes that include them, female domestic workers will be pushed to extreme conditions of poverty. AIDWA has demanded the government to immediately disburse cash into the Jan Dhan Yojana and MNREGA accounts and increase the amount for all non-taxpayers to Rs 7500 for the coming three months. The disbursal of Rs 500 has only begun in the third phase of the lockdown, despite pressure from women’s organisations ever since it began.
ASHA Workers and the Women in Healthcare Sectors
COVID-19 has rapidly become a public health emergency across the globe and most countries have taken various measures to deal with it. The possibility of community spread was a major fear the virus instilled in health professionals. With the growing number of patients, it became clear that the deployment of community-based health workers was essential to manage this health emergency. In India, this is being done by Accredited Social Healthcare Activists (ASHA).
An ASHA worker is a female volunteer between 25-45 years of age. For every 1000 people in a village, one ASHA worker is deployed. Their responsibility is to act as a link between the community and the public health system.
Around 900,000 ASHA workers have been designated by different states to help the Health Department in this crisis across India. These workers do not have a fixed salary and receive between Rs 2000-4000 per month as honorarium. With COVID-19 cases increasing rapidly, the service of ASHA workers has become crucial and inevitable. Despite their selfless efforts and significant contribution, governments have taken little measures to ensure their safety and wellbeing. They are not provided with PPE kits in many states and are working under very unsafe conditions. Their exposure to the virus spread is so vast that the chances of them getting infected are high. Similar is the condition of all other frontline healthcare workers.
It was reported by The Hindu, on April 10, that even those nurses who have been undertaking 13-14 hour “COVID duty” are not provided with necessary facilities to be quarantined. In New Delhi, the nursing staff of Lok Nayak Jai Prakash hospital gave a call to protest their poor working conditions. Female nursing staff are recruited in private hospitals for menial salary and they have now been asked to take up duty on rotation basis, without being provided with enough facilities to quarantine themselves after a stipulated period of duty.
The number of health workers getting detected COVID-19 positive has also increased. In every state, a significant number of health workers, including doctors, nursing staff and ASHA workers, have been found positive and are undergoing treatment. In fact, on April 6 in Karnataka, a frontline health worker died of coronavirus.
Migrant Women Labourers
The central government has finally come up allowing various states to take measures to call the migrant labourers stranded in other states. But the livelihood of those workers has been under suspension since March 25th. They have not been provided with any substantial packages to survive the lockdown-imposed starvation. As the mobility has not returned to normalcy, the migrant labourers will not find any way of income. Many of them do not even possess permanent residences back at their home places as they have been shifting from place to place for their livelihood.
We have witnessed how daily wagers have been walking miles back as the sudden lockdown suspended all kinds of transport facilities. We have seen the pathetic demise of a twelve-year-old girl who had to walk 150 kilometres from Telangana to reach her home place. The sudden suspension of work and the consequent unemployment have forced many of them to walk miles back as they no longer see any prospect, not even any security and survival in their workplaces. The incidents of migrant workers coming out in protest haven’t gone down even in this third phase. The centre and the states have treated them with lathies instead of offering them shelters and assuring social security.
Even when transport is being arranged for stranded labourers to reach back their home states, they will not be devoid of difficulties. Even though BJP claims that the government bears 85% of the ticket fare for the migrants in arranging transport for their return, reports have come where the labourers are revealing that they had to bear the ticket charges. Apart from Kerala, no state has ensured the availability of food and water supply for them. It would obviously be difficult for women to travel in untoward situations during their menstrual period, pregnancy and breastfeeding phases. As all the public spaces are now inaccessible, and using public toilets can be risky, they suffer from no facility to change napkins and urinate. This would lead to a severe health condition like miscarriage for women, especially when general healthcare services are inaccessible.
Unpaid Care Work
The lockdown has escalated the volume of household work in all families. Schools and day-cares have been closed, and children are sitting at home. A tremendous amount of time needs to be allocated for feeding, keeping amused and home-school them. The noon meal that children used to get in anganwadis and schools are not available any longer. The schedule of household chores accordingly has been gone upside down. The burden of taking care of them will be entirely on the female folk of the house. If there are elders at home, then the burden will exacerbate more with them needing special care. The presence of sick people at home will also trouble women more as they have to be attended with more consideration than usual. The entire burden of household work and caretaking will fall upon the women of the house as it is the existing social norm. Taking the exclusive responsibility of running a household has been the critical restraint to women’s ability to work outside the home. This will lead to job losses, under-performance and fluctuations in women’s career graphs.
Around 70% of non-pregnant and 75% pregnant women between the age of 15 and 45 years in India are anaemic. Women with no say in their household activities are more prone to malnutrition and vulnerability as found by The Rajasthan Nutrition Project done in 2015. The additional and exacerbate the burden of household work will make them more vulnerable towards malnutrition and subsequent health conditions.
Domestic Violence and Intimate Partner Violence
UN has observed it its Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Women that “violence against women and girls is increasing globally as COVID-19 pandemic combines with economic and social stresses and measure to restrict contact and movement”. Eighty percent of Indian working women are victims of domestic violence, according to the last National Family Health Survey done in 2015-16. As the possibility of moving out of the residential spaces is completely obliterated, victims are now trapped with their abuses. Data on gender violence before the pandemic says that one in three women experienced gender-based violence in their lifetime. With the pandemic and the unavoidable lockdown, the scale must have shot up to an unimaginable level.
On April 5, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres made an appeal to be alert about the surge in domestic violence amid lockdowns and to adopt preventive measures in accordance. Countries like France have responded by promising to set up government-paid hotel rooms for domestic violence victims. The possibility of perpetrators taking advantage of the vulnerability of women and girls to call for help is worrisome. Women and girls can be thrown out in streets at any point with no shelter, and this risk of being expelled at the time of a global pandemic would make them more susceptible to the violence.
In India, 80% of working women suffer from domestic violence. On April 17, India’s National Commission for Women (NCW) stated that 587 domestic violence complaints were registered between March 23 and April 16. The number shows that the scale of rise in case is almost double, when compared to the previous 25 days between February 27 and March 22.
No other state than Kerala has set up any remedial measures to the violence women may face during this period. Kerala has declared their plan to set up 28 fast track courts to deal with this. On April 18, the Delhi High Court directed the state and central governments to immediately initiate measures to deal with surging domestic violence.
Conclusion
Any pandemic will not only enhance existing inequalities, but will also nullify all efforts hitherto taken to trim them down. The novel coronavirus pandemic has created unprecedented economic and social crises across the globe. Any plan to recover, which does not include women and girls, will only amplify the discrimination they have been facing.
As per the country’s Ministry of Labour and Employment records, more than 40 lakh women work as domestic help. Most employers have kept them in distress without ensuring payment during the lockdown. For workers who stay in cities, withholding salaries will make their lives difficult. The agony caused due to unemployment and poverty will increase the scale of domestic violence, as it has already done; this will only see a surge during the lockdown, as women are locked up with their abusers, with minimal possibility of escape. The chances of getting medical and legal help during this time are also low. The impact of lockdown is most severe on migrant, working class women, as belonging to the lowest strata of the social ladder, they endure all of the aforementioned difficulties.
Our support system majorly consists of women as maids, caretakers, ASHA and Anganwadi workers. The maids and caretakers have been at home during this period of lockdown without any income. Once the lockdown is lifted, they will again have to search for amicable workplaces as the economic and social condition will undoubtedly vary after the health emergency. ASHA and Anganwadi workers are supporting the health department to manage the pandemic. If not braced with remarkable incentives, their lives will be thrown to a severe economic crisis.
On April 14, when the first round of lockdown was expected to be lifted, AIDWA urged the government to respond to the demands made by women, working-class and peasant organisations of the country by declaring more economic packages to people. India hasn’t even spent 1 percent of its GDP on COVID relief – the lowest of all countries. AIDWA and others have demanded the centre to take immediate measures to address the penury migrant labourers and women in the informal sector are suffering, but the union government, led by BJP, has shown little interest to initiate any substantial remedies. Without putting women and girls and the centre of economic planning, it would not be easy for the country to pull through the social crises that have been taking place along with the spread of the virus.
The central government definitely lacks a gender lens to look at the issue through. Designing packages and socio-economic policies, with a focus on the conditions of women and girls is inevitable for an inclusive relief stratagem.
Sahana Pradeep is a research scholar at the Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies, University of Hyderabad.
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