"This Time Changed my Life”: Discourses and Experiences of Domestic Workers During the Pandemic in Granada and Zaragoza, Spain

The purpose of this article is to analyze how the covid-19 pandemic affected the perceptions and uses of time of domestic workers in Spain, focusing, in particular, on the cities of Granada and Zaragoza. Our work derives from the project "El cuidado importa. Impacto de género en las cuidadoras/es de mayores y dependientes en tiempos de la Covid-19” (CUMADE) coordinated by Universidad Rovira I Virgili de Tarragona-Cataluña (Spain), and run by interdisciplinary research teams from ten Spanish universities between the months of September 2020 and January 2021. The research is qualitative, based on in-depth interviews, and designed to investigate the impact of covid-19 on the care of the elderly and dependents and, more specifically, on the domestic workers' sector. Temporality, so severely affected by the uncertainty and unpredictability of the new situation, provides an interesting axis for qualitative analysis of the discourses of women workers on the way in which the pandemic has conditioned their daily lives. To undertake this analysis, we base ourselves on the work of Ramón Ramos on las imágenes sociales del tiempo (the social images of time). This approach represents an original and novel analysis of the reality of domestic workers, while at the same time dialoguing with other recent work on this issue. The images of time as a resource, scenario, or horizon serve to analyze the discourse of our interviewees and show how time, understood as a social category, has structured and organized their lives. We consider what they have been able to do and what they have not been able to do, the distribution and intensification of tasks, their plans for the future, and the physical and emotional impact of the pandemic. © 2023, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota Colombia. All rights reserved.

Domestic Burdens Amid Covid-19 and Women's Mental Health in Middle-Income Africa

This article analyzes two longitudinal datasets (October–December 2020;April 2021) of 1,000 and 900 women in Kenya and Nigeria, respectively, alongside in-depth qualitative interviews with women at risk of changes to time use, to study two pandemic issues: women's substitution of paid for unpaid work and how these shifts compromise their mental health. Women devote more time to domestic care (30–38 percent), less time to employment (29–46 percent), and become unemployed (12–17 percent). A rise in domestic work is correlated with depressive (Nigeria) and anxiety symptoms (Kenya and Nigeria). Women with greater agency (Kenya) and fewer children (Nigeria) are less likely to report a domestic burden or loss in paid activities. Social protection programs may fill the void of assistance traditionally provided by informal networks in the short term, while campaigns shifting norms around household work may preserve women's economic participation in the long term. HIGHLIGHTS Women in Kenya and Nigeria reported increases in domestic labor amid the pandemic. Women's agency is negatively associated with the domestic burden and a reduction in paid activities in Kenya. Women in households with two or more children face greater domestic burdens and losses in paid activities in Nigeria. Increases in domestic work render women more likely to be anxious (Kenya and Nigeria) and depressed (Nigeria). © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Locking Down Gender Roles? A Time-Use Perspective on Gender Division of Household Labour during the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown in Belgium.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the division of household labour could continue to lock down or start to break gender roles. Using time-use data of n = 473 individuals collected during the lockdown restrictions in Belgium from March to May 2020, we analyse the gendered division of routine and non-routine household labour in absolute time use and relative shares. We compare against the Belgian time-use data of 2013 for the same time period (n = 678 individuals). A time-demanding work and living situation associate with an increase in men's time spent on household labour during the lockdown but not with a change in women's time use. The gender gap closes in absolute time but not in relative shares of routine and non-routine household labour. The limited impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gender division of household labour indicates a temporal rather than a substantial change in gender roles.

How Covid-19 Affected the Work Prospects and Healthcare-Seeking of Women Domestic Workers in Kolkata City, India? A Longitudinal Study.

Background: Self-negligence, societal neglect, and lack of access to adequate health care make domestic workers vulnerable to ill-health. COVID-19 has adversely affected the work prospects of people across social classes and their health care-seeking opportunities as well. We studied the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on work prospects and health care-seeking behavior of a vulnerable section of the society - the women domestic workers. Methods: A longitudinal analysis on 292 randomly selected women domestic workers residing in slums of "Kalikapur" locality of Kolkata city, West Bengal (India). Data were collected using a predesigned and pretested schedule twice: in early-2020 (before severe impact of COVID-19) and mid-2020 (during the pandemic ravaging India). Paired t-test and McNemar's test were used to check for significant changes. Result: Of all the participants, 57.2% lost jobs partially while 2.7% were completely jobless in mid-2020; the average daily work-hour decreased by 25.7%. Their average monthly pay significantly reduced (P < 0.05); mean family income in mid-2020 was lesser as well, compared to earlier (P < 0.05). Compared to early-2020, 15.8% more participants were sole bread-winners for their families during COVID-19. Number of participants visiting health practitioners significantly reduced (P < 0.05) in mid-2020. Rise in over-the-counter medicine use (P < 0.05) and increased tendency to ignore symptoms (P < 0.05) during COVID-19 was noted. Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected work prospects and health care-seeking behavior of women domestic workers negatively. Most of them faced wage reduction, many becoming sole-earners for their families. This necessitates continued formulation and implementation of strategies ensuring social benefits including healthcare. Awareness about affordable healthcare and ill-effects of bad practices like self-medication should also be built.

A feminist-economics analysis of Latin American budgets show an urgent need for redistribution of income and care work

Analysing fiscal policy from the perspective of feminist economics means examining gender equality policies, both in terms of tax revenue and other sources of fund (indebtedness), as well as redistribution and public spending. Finding out the number of resources assigned to these policies, their macroeconomic impact, and their temporality (longevity) is extremely essential. In this paper, we will analyse public expenditure in the budgets of Latin American countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. The budget proposals tabled for the region focus on employment generation through the creation of care centres, with policies that focus on both redistribution of income and redistribution of care work. © 2022 Oxfam KEDV.

Domains of Physical and Mental Workload in Health Work and Unpaid Domestic Work by Gender Division: A Study with Primary Health Care Workers in Brazil.

Various studies indicate that workload metrics can be used to assess inequities in the division of labor according to gender and in the mental health of health care professionals. In most studies, the workload is portrayed in a way that does not integrate the different fields of work, that is, work in health services and unpaid domestic work. The objective was to determine the effects of the workload domains of health work and unpaid domestic work according to the gender division of health professionals working in primary health care (PHC), and to analyze the workload as an inducer of anxiety disorders and episodes of depression. This cross-sectional study consisted of 342 health care professionals recruited for interview at primary health care units in the extreme south of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Sociodemographic and occupational variables, workload in PHC and unpaid domestic work, and dichotomies of anxiety disorders and episodes of depression were considered. Poisson and multivariate linear regression models were used for data analysis. Cohen's standardized effect size was used to assess the magnitude of the difference between women and men in terms of workload. The female professionals presented higher scores in terms of PHC work and unpaid domestic work and higher proportions of episodes of depression and anxiety disorders compared to males. The male professionals showed that anxiety disorders presented a medium standardized effect size on domestic workload and the level of frustration with family involvement was higher in those with episodes of depression. The results illustrate that the workload metric is an important indicator of female vulnerability to working conditions in PHC and in the family environment.

The gender division of unpaid care work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

The COVID-19 pandemic and related closures of day care centres and schools significantly increased the amount of care work done by parents. There has been much speculation over whether the pandemic increased or decreased gender equality in parental care work. Based on representative data for Germany from spring 2020 and winter 2021 we present an empirical analysis that shows that although gender inequality in the division of care work increased to some extent in the beginning of the pandemic, it returned to the pre-pandemic level in the second lockdown almost nine months later. These results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic neither aggravated nor lessened inequality in the division of unpaid care work among mothers and fathers in any persistent way in Germany. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.

Social utility against work: Lessons from unpaid work and its struggles

As underlined by the conflicts surrounding both volunteer and domestic unpaid work which took place during the COVID-19 lockdown period: by no means everything that contributes to society is defined as work, and not all contributors are equally seen as workers. By emphasizing the normative dimension of this notion of social utility and the social relations that structure it, we intend to highlight the ambivalent relationship that this criterion for the recognition of activities, but also of people, entertains with the notion of work. Social utility is not just one possible criterion among many for objectively assessing and prioritizing the value of occupations, and thus improving the recognition of work, through work. It is also an operator of the denial of work as work, through the institutionalization and development of gendered and racialized processes of assignment to unpaid work. The analysis of unpaid work and its struggles thus invites us to shift the question of the links between recognition of work and social utility from inside the sphere of work to its frontiers and to reopen our definition of work in order to develop a response.

Work in pandemic times: Exploring precarious continuities in paid domestic work in India.

Research on crisis have brought to fore the necessity of studying the gendered impact of such events. Covid-19 too has shown how gender relations play a role in the political economy of crisis, relief and response as well as recovery. This article focusses on the experiences of paid domestic workers in India who are among the most invisible and marginalized of India's informal workers and largely excluded from labor discourse and employment legislation. With Covid-19, the precariousness characterizing the sector has also been further exposed and exacerbated, with vast numbers of workers now facing significant challenges to livelihood, as well as several new/additional pressures and risks, both at work and at home. In this article, we examine these Covid-related challenges, drawing on interviews conducted with domestic workers, NGO practitioners, and labor rights' activists in Delhi and Kolkata between April and August 2020. We show how, during the national lockdown, many domestic workers in these cities experienced increased insecurity related to jobs and housing, as well as an increased control and surveillance at home. Furthermore, with the partial easing of lockdown and the associated 'return' to work, many experienced reduced bargaining power at work, increasingly blurred roles, and heavier workloads. Workers also experienced more overt forms of avoidance behavior, linked to ideas of caste/class and more recent notions of 'hygiene'/'distancing'. In detailing these experiences and contextualizing them within a much longer history of invisibilization and marginalization facing workers engaged in social reproduction, we draw attention to what we call the 'precarious continuities' in paid domestic work. We argue that the crisis allows for a lens to widen the theoretical understanding around social reproduction as a form of underpaid and devalued labor.

Health and safety in paid domestic work: what does the COVID 19 pandemic reveal?

Reproductive labor, whether paid or unpaid, is gradually occupying different places of interest in research, not only in Brazil but worldwide. Brazil, specifically, has had a historical delay in acknowledging and regulating such work as an occupation, which occurred only in 2013 with the 72nd Amendment to the Constitution and in 2015 with Complementary Law 150, after decades of struggle by these workers. This delay also reverberates in the near absence of discussion about the occupational health and safety of this profession. The purpose of this essay is to reflect on the vulnerability of occupational health of paid domestic workers in the Brazilian context and on discussions about the "indispensability" of such work during the COVID 19 pandemic. Support for these reflections is based on theories of the sexual division of labor in the context of reproductive labor, specifically paid domestic work. We consider the socio-historical-cultural conditions of domestic workers, which concentrate structural elements of an exclusionary society with disparate social inequalities: racism, gender, class, and education. There is an urgent need to standardize these aspects both from a technical point of view, such as through surveys of risks, provision of collective and personal protective equipment, establishment of causal links, and reporting of occupational accidents; and from the standpoint of socio-historical-cultural hazards that involve the profession. We conclude by discussing challenges faced in addressing the deep, harmful scars that exist in our society.

MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORK IN CHILE AND COVID-19. BOLIVIAN CAREGIVERS ON WASTE GROUND

Migrant domestic work is an alternative to the care crisis in many countries. However, paid domestic work has not been adequately relieved as a care provider agent, nor are there public policies that grant it sufficient protection and rights. The current pandemic exposed such shortcomings. The article conceptualizes as a syndemic the interrelationships between the care crisis, the health crisis and poverty, which exacerbate the negative consequences of COVID-19 on women. Through in-depth interviews and documentary review, the text reflects on domestic service as care work and analyses Bolivian domestic workers in Chile who carry out circular migration and their vulnerability to the pandemic, as they were stranded on waste ground with the closure of the Chilean-Bolivian border. The article ends with proposals for public care policies for migrant domestic workers, with a human rights-based approach and from a gender perspective. © 2021. All Rights Reserved.

COVID-19 and a "crisis of care": A feminist analysis of public policy responses to paid and unpaid care and domestic work.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted gender inequalities, increasing the amount of unpaid care weighing on women and girls, and the vulnerabilities faced by paid care workers, often women working informally. Using a global database on social protection responses to COVID-19 that focuses on social assistance, social insurance and labour market programmes, this article considers whether and how these responses have integrated care considerations. Findings indicate that, although many responses addressed at least one aspect of care (paid or unpaid), very few countries have addressed both types of care, prompting a discussion of the implications of current policy responses to COVID-19 (and beyond) through a care lens.

Deepening Problems of Domestic Workers During the COVID-19 Outbreak: The Case of Istanbul

The COVID-19 outbreak has caused social and economic problems at a global level. Unemployment, reduced participation in the workforce, loss of income, lack of social protection, and infection are among employment-related problems, impacting insecure groups, mostly working informally adversely. Domestic workers included in these groups were particularly vulnerable during the pandemic due to informality and insecurity. This study aims to understand the issues faced by 35 women domestic workers in Istanbul throughout the pandemic by conducting in-depth interviews using semi-structured questions via online platforms or phone calls. The problems and rights violations experienced by domestic workers were evaluated descriptively through interview data within the study's scope. Research findings show that domestic workers are subjected to numerous rights violations related to the right to work and other fundamental human rights. Among the issues raised in interviews, loss of work and income, lack of social protection, heavy workload, and inability to access paid leave emerged.

'YOU HAVE NOWHERE TO GO (AND I DO)'. HOW FEAR OF CONTAGION AFFECTS MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS

In the current COVID-19 context, we analyze how fear of contagion impacts on the working conditions of female migrant domestic workers in Spain. The article opens up the liminality in which the conditions of domestic work reproduction, and its regulatory framework, place these workers. It focuses on three related dimensions. First, how the power relations between workers, the person who is cared for and the family are reworked, and the new forms of coexistence within the households that it entails. Second, the emotional overload that home lockdown and social isolation means for these female workers. Third, how the gender, class and race boundaries between "us" and "others" are reshaped within the framework of domestic work servile relationships. Fear as a social category stems from a labour and immigration regulatory framework that deprives these female workers of their rights, and from a care economy that neglects and makes invisible the abuses and suffering that characterize this sector.

Gender and Covid-19: Are women bearing the brunt? A case study for Bolivia

The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) is threatening the well-being of citizens in most countries of the world;however, women and men could be affected in different ways. This study uses a gender-sensitive computable general equilibrium model linked to a micro model to assess the impacts of COVID-19 in Bolivia. The results reveal negative effects for all economic agents. Female-headed households in general and those headed by unskilled women in particular are the most affected, as they experience significant reductions in employment and the largest increases in household burdens. This increases poverty and inequality for more women than men.

Gender division of housework during the COVID-19 pandemic: Temporary shocks or durable change?

BACKGROUND First evidence shows that lockdown and confinement measures were associated with a more egalitarian gender division of housework in the United Kingdom. However, we know little about how the gender division of housework adjusted in different phases of the pandemic. OBJECTIVE We ask: (1) How did the gender division of housework change with the first national lockdown in March 2020? (2) Did observed changes persist when the lockdown measures were lifted or did couples revert to the gender division of housework observed before lockdown? METHODS We describe changes in the share of housework done by women before, during, and after the first lockdown using data from the Understanding Society COVID-19 study and employing fixed effects regression for couples with pre-school or school age children and couples without children living at home. RESULTS The lockdown measures affected the gender division of housework with differential effects by the age of the youngest child in the household. After the initial shock, couples with younger children and couples with school-age children reverted to their pre-pandemic gender division of housework. However, couples without children living at home sustained a more equal share of housework. CONCLUSIONS Like other shocks to the division of labor, couples tend to adapt to new circumstances, sustaining previous patterns of within household inequality. Initial signs of increasing gender equality at the start of the pandemic had already started to vanish for some by September 2020.

Pandemic Shock Absorbers: Domestic Workers’ Activism at the Intersection of Immigrants’ and Workers’ Rights

During the current global pandemic, when the family or household has been considered the most basic unit of quarantine, the role of the domestic worker – someone who by definition crosses the threshold and enters the space of the home – became problematised quickly. These workers’ ‘outsider’ status – transgressing the boundaries not just of the physical household space, but often also of race, immigration status, and class – has meant that some household workers were more readily regarded as disease vectors who were too risky to allow into the home and let go with little or no warning. In the United States, many of the federal and state relief bills responding to the pandemic continue to exclude the sector or undocumented immigrant workers or both from accessing relief measures. Drawing on an online ethnography of organisations and policy reviews, we analyse the multilevel response of domestic workers’ organisations to address the crisis at both the federal and local levels, with focus on the state of Massachusetts. This chapter tackles the variety of ways in which worker centres in the United States have been at the frontline of the response to domestic workers’ needs, addressing a gap in mainstream and otherwise insufficient relief measures provided by the government. Because of these gaps and the sheer level of need faced by these workers and their families, these centres did what they were prepared to do: continue the service provision, education, organising, and advocacy efforts while expanding their efforts in each of these areas of work. © 2022, The Author(s).