THE PANDEMIC HAS CAUSED WOMEN GREATER LABOUR PAIN

Covid-19 has shown that women are more likely to face the brunt of job losses than men, and find fewer opportunities when they want to resume. That apart, several have to deal with increased hours of unpaid work at home and even domestic abuse

- DIYA DUTTA

The surge in the deadly Covid-19 virus worldwide last year followed by the sudden complete lockdown imposed in India from March 24, 2020, left many poignant images of the plight of the country’s poor and migrants. One such image was of a dead woman lying on the Muzaffarnagar platform while a toddler, presumably hers, was tugging at the sheet on which she was lying.

The woman was Arvina Khatoon, a migrant from Srikol village in the Katihar district of Bihar. It is said that she died of dehydration and hunger, while returning to her native village after she lost her job during the pandemic, and all sources of income and food.

Initially, it was said the coronavirus does not differentiate between the rich and the poor, and men and women. However, with the passage of time, it was evident that the existing socioeconomic inequalities have led to an unequal health and economic impact among the various population sub-groups and defined their coping abilities in recovering from the crisis. The increasing inequality and the unequal impact on the haves and have-nots have prompted many to refer to the health crisis as the “pandemic of inequality”. Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary General, rightly put it in his speech at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in 2020 when he said, “The Covid-19 pandemic has played an important role in highlighting growing inequalities. It exposed the myth that everyone is in the same boat. While we are all floating on the same sea, it’s clear that some are in superyachts, while others are clinging to the drifting debris.”