COVID-19 has stretched into craters of acute lack for women already living on the fringes. This piece was written for the Urja Foundation and is reproduced with permission.
Image: Reuters/Dinuka Liyanawatte
There’s a pandemic within each pandemic. Within all crises are pockets of crisis, none ever gender-neutral. In freezing avalanches, women continue to bleed. In raging tsunamis, continue to birth. Covid-19 is no different. Like all other catastrophes, the pandemic has hit women the hardest. Even within this gender segregation, the worst off are the poor and the homeless.
The United Nation’s Women’s report from Insights to Action, claims this year, the pandemic will push 96 million to extreme poverty. Of these, 47 million will be women and girls.
What makes COVID-19 a women’s crisis?
- Dramatic rise in domestic violence
- Exploding domestic work burden
- Zero income for women working the informal sectors
- Lack of access to feminine hygiene areas and products
Women’s homelessness arising from these factors has seen acute intensification during Covid-19.
Covid = higher domestic violence
Most women are dependents
Historically, all economic crises hit women harder. Women stay dependent on their men – even the meagre daily wages of street dwellers. Women sack up on unpaid care and domestic work, often voluntarily / forcibly dropping out of the labour force.
Lockdowns spent in close, continual contact with acute financial stress, has drastically upped rates of domestic violence. According to the U.N., globally, 243 million women, between the ages of 15 to 49, have been subject to physical / sexual violence in the last year.
Lockdown = zero incomes = No homes
Most women work the informal sectors
Even for women active within the workforce, their numbers are higher in the informal sectors. Domestic workers, daily wagers at construction sites, micro-enterprises ranging from home kitchens to child-care as well as those working the skin trade. Several of these women run single-parent households.
With Covid, these incomes have disappeared. This means no money to pay rents for their shanties in the cities.
Still, children need to be clothe and fed. Ironically, it’s also translated into an exploding burden of domestic work for women.
‘Stay home. Who has a home? Not me.’
Homeless and struggling
Women from minorities, girls at the intersection between villages and cities, run-aways, abandoned women and children are in even more precarious positions.
Already stretched inequalities just got sharper. Lack of access to basics meant no usage of public bathrooms – their sole respite, especially during menstrual cycles.
Whether as dependents, wage-earners or women already without shelter, COVID has peaked their marginalisation.
Urja Social and Educational Welfare Foundation is an India-based organization focused on women empowerment.
Ashishwang Godha
Ashishwang is a food journalist and editor who is also currently lending her superior English language capabilities and strong editing skills to the UN-backed Stories of Resilience campaign as an Editor.
Some of her publishing experience includes:
• Autobiographical writer and editor, Cancer to Comrades.
• Editor, coffee-table travel book, Antartica: India’s 90 Degree Journey.
• Editor, coffee-table travelogue, Dream Destinations.
• Authored a culinary book for the Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board, MP On a Platter.
• Content and ideation launch of http://www.culinaryculture.in, India’s premier hospitality ratings guide, in 2020.
• Was Co-director of a culinary website http://www.spicewok.com.
• Consulting editor, Times Foodista, a monthly Times of India publication from June 2012 – 2014.
• Consulting editor with Times Good Eating, a monthly Times of India publication from May 2011 – Dec 2011.
Derek J. Wheeler 