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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/studies-4-coronashock-and-patriarchy/">https://www.thetricontinental.org/studies-4-coronashock-and-patriarchy/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">CoronaShock and Patriarchy</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">November 5,2020</div>
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<p>
<span><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/es/studies-4-coronashock-y-patriarcado/"><span>Español</span></a></span> <span><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/pt-pt/estudos-4-coronachoque-e-patriarcado/"><span>Português</span></a></span></p><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/20201104-Coronashock4-Web-Feature-1.jpg" alt="" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="443" height="332"></p>
<h2><span><strong>Preface </strong></span></h2>
<p><em>Eli Gómez Alcorta</em></p>
<p><em>Ministry of Women, Genders, and Diversity (Argentina)</em></p>
<p>When mandatory preventative social isolation was announced in our
country, only a few weeks had passed since 8 March, the date when
women’s and the LGBTQIA+ movements once again put a political agenda and
series of demands on the table. This agenda is linked to eliminating
gender-based violence and inequality, which confront us in every aspect
of life.</p>
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic brought visibility and clarity to many of the
things that feminist and socialist movements have been saying for some
time. First of all, that we live in a system that has reached atrocious
and unprecedented levels of inequality, exclusion, hate, and
discrimination as if it were ‘normal’ or ‘natural’. It is not an
exaggeration to say that if we don’t put an end to this ‘normalcy’, we
will drive straight towards the destruction of the planet and of
humanity. Second, on a global level, COVID-19 has also made clear the
importance of the state, once again shedding light on the vitality of
state intervention — not just any kind of intervention, but the
intervention of a state that cares for people and health and that
preserves life. The pandemic has also put care work into the spotlight
like never before, shedding light on tasks that have historically been
feminised, socially and economically devalued, and which have become
increasingly precarious.</p>
<p>Existing inequalities remain apparent. It is not the same to
experience quarantine for those who live in houses and for those who
live in shacks; for those who have work and those who do not; for those
who have access to adequate infrastructure such as roads, internet, and
transportation, and those who do not; those who have running water and
those who do not; for women and for men; for cis women and for trans
women… This inequality — which is normalised as if it were a natural
phenomenon and not a political one — corresponds directly to the
severity of the impact of today’s health crisis felt by different
sectors of society.</p>
<p>For women and the LGBTQIA+ community, the inequality and oppression
associated with this ‘normalcy’ are reflected by the exacerbation of
gender-based violence, the increase in poverty, and the increase and
overload of care work.</p>
<p>The enormous challenges that we face today are how to craft a
strategy that takes the current emergency into account and that
transcends it, and how to make sure that the impact of the pandemic
doesn’t leave us even poorer, more subjected to violence, and more
exploited. At the same time, we must work towards structural
transformations that disarm relationships of power that reproduce
violence and inequality.</p>
<p>The role that we have as militants of popular feminism is central in
the tasks that lie ahead of us. In our country, thousands of us have met
for over thirty-four years<a name="_ftnref1">[1]</a>
to discuss a political agenda for the women’s and feminist movement,
sharing with each other and organising ourselves in various parts of the
country. We have a history of labour organisation, of fighting for our
rights and fighting for our work to be recognised. We see ourselves
reflected in the struggle for human rights in our country, in the <em>madres</em> and <em>abuelas</em><a name="_ftnref2">[</a><a name="_ftnref2">2</a><a name="_ftnref2">]</a> who are part of the history of our movement.</p>
<p>In the last few years, the women’s movement has gained resounding strength. For five years, the <em>Ni Una Menos </em>(‘Not
One Less’) movement has erupted in the streets of Argentina, putting on
the agenda the urgent need of public policies to prevent gender-based
violence and to provide aid to those who are subjected to such violence,
demanding <em>no nos maten más</em>: stop killing us. With the <em>Cambiemos </em>(‘Let’s Change’) party in office<a name="_ftnref3">[3]</a>
and the advance of neoliberalism, these debates of the movement lined
up behind a new agenda. When there is an economic crisis, there is also a
feminisation of poverty and of neoliberal policies, which hit women and
the LGBTQIA+ community even harder, further exacerbating inequality.
But the movement responded with organised resistance. The women’s
movement led the first national women’s strike in 2016 and the massive
‘green wave’ during the debate on abortion in 2018, making it clear that
the women’s and the LGBTQIA+ movement is among the most dynamic actors
of our time.</p>
<p>Standing on the shoulders of the struggles that came before us and the sisters of our <em>Patria Grande</em> (‘Great Homeland’)<a name="_ftnref4">[4]</a> and of the world<em>, </em>we
must work to emerge from this crisis better off than we are now, to put
everything up for debate, and to assure ourselves that this debate
comes from a popular, progressive, and feminist consensus.</p>
<h2><span><strong>Introduction</strong></span></h2>
<p>In our series on CoronaShock, we have discussed how a virus that
struck the world with such gripping force has swiftly laid bare today’s
social, political, and economic issues; COVID-19 has exposed the
crumbling bourgeois social order while shedding light on the humanising
resistance in socialist parts of the world.</p>
<p>In the midst of this global health, political, economic, and social
crisis, it is often women who bear the brunt of the cataclysmic shifts
in daily life, from the increasing care work of children, the elderly,
and the sick to skyrocketing incidences of gender-based violence, as
women and LGBTQIA+ people are quarantined with their abusers. As
countries across the world experience different stages of the pandemic,
it looks like 2020 will be shaped by an attempt to adapt to and survive
in this new reality.</p>
<p>For months now, several countries around the world have been
experimenting with different methods and stages of physical distancing
and shelter-in-place orders. Some have begun to loosen lockdown
restrictions and reopen the economy, while others are trying to flatten
the rising curve of new infections. Uncertainty looms over how long it
will take to recover from these incalculable social and economic losses
as new challenges emerge for societies at large.</p>
<p>In this study, we seek to understand the current health crisis more
comprehensively, which means that we must also understand it as a social
and economic crisis. First, we will address the social and labour
impacts of the crisis and look at the consequences for workers who are
on the frontline of the pandemic: healthcare and essential workers,
informal workers, and the most vulnerable members of society. Second, we
will address care work as well as the impact of the lockdown and
physical distancing measures on those workers. Third, we will address
the increase in patriarchal violence during the quarantine, providing a
historical analysis and connecting the latest increase in violence with
recent political events, especially in the Global South. At the end of
this study, we present a list of people’s demands that have been put
forward by women’s and feminist organisations across the world to build a
more just, humane, and equal society as we face this global crisis.</p>
<h2><span><strong>I. The Social and Labour Impact of CoronaShock</strong></span></h2>
<p>We are living through the worst crisis in the history of capitalism.
This current crisis was sparked by a small, invisible virus that
nevertheless led to the ‘largest inadvertent general strike in modern
history’ as it forced the planet into lockdown, in the <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/06/01/coronashock-the-greatest-crisis-in-the-history-of-capitalism/">words</a>
of Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social
Research. At least half of the global labour force is out of work and/or
staying at home, which has had far-reaching effects on the world’s
economic growth rates. Labour produces value, and when workers are
forced into lockdown, no economy escapes the repercussions. In a
globalised world, when supply chains and industrial plants are forced to
shut down either part or all of their operations, the economic impact
becomes catastrophic for all countries — especially those in the Global
South.</p>
<p>The implementation of the neoliberal model has made it even more
complex to tackle the challenges that we face today. As this model
promotes tax reductions, privatisation, and outsourcing, states become
more and more debilitated, cut their budgets, and reduce social
investments. Austerity policies, a minimal state, and the weakening of
labour unions and social organisations have compromised the social and
public resources that are necessary to tackle the pandemic, whether in
the realm of healthcare, social services, or services dedicated to
assist the most vulnerable segments of society. Under these conditions,
healthcare and social service systems have collapsed, lessening access
to essential humanitarian aid.</p>
<h3><span><strong>The Consequences of Neoliberal Expropriation</strong></span></h3>
<p>Health is not only about the individual; it is a complex, socially
determined process. This aspect is often left out of the discussion on
public health, which is centred instead on biomedical views that reduce
health issues, prevention strategies, and treatment processes to the
individual level. The neoliberal project gravely and severely threatens
health as a fundamental universal and social right. Human rights,
universality, equity, coverage, primary healthcare, and other concerns
have been co-opted and transformed by neoliberal ideology.</p>
<p>Neoliberal ideology, which increased its hegemony in Latin America in
the 1990s following the Washington Consensus, has successfully promoted
the idea that the problems faced by Latin America were caused by the
allegedly oversized public sector, and that structural fiscal
adjustments and the privatisation of state-run services were necessary
to solve those issues. After decades of neoliberal transformations and
structural adjustment policies that were marked by the implementation of
new technologies and the expropriation of common resources and goods,
market fundamentalism ultimately prevailed. This led to partial,
short-term interventions at the cost of efficient, sustainable,
long-term public policies. In the midst of this political and economic
climate, and based on the <a href="https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/468831468340807129/world-development-report-1993-investing-in-health">document</a>
‘Investing in Health’ (1993), the World Bank intervened in the area of
public health by forging an agenda and a model for reforms that lean
toward the privatisation and commodification of healthcare.</p>
<p>The fight against health crises such as the one that we are facing
today has been severely stunted by the destruction, dismantling,
dispossession, and trade-off of public healthcare systems. The scenes of
desperation seen across the world of dead bodies left in the streets
after local systems collapse — as in the case of Guayaquil, Ecuador, or
the mass graves dug in many Latin American countries — expose the depth
of neoliberal dispossession in the region. The Americas have the largest
number of reported COVID-19 cases of any region in the world, followed
by other countries in the Global South such as India.</p>
<p>The World Health Organisation <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-latest-who-says-health-workers-account-for-10-of-global-infections/a-54208221">estimates</a>
that healthcare workers account for 10 per cent of COVID-19 infections
across the world. It is clear that being on the frontlines results in a
greater risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 and of being exposed to
excessive stress, combined with other feelings of uncertainty. This
reality predates the pandemic but has only become more dire, provoked by
issues such as a shortage of personal protective equipment, long work
hours, and the imminent risk of becoming unemployed or being forced to
take informal jobs. In addition to this stress, women health workers
continue to carry out care work in their private lives, often including
housework and child and/or elder care.</p>
<p>What makes certain workers in the healthcare field — from cleaning
staff to informal care workers — even more vulnerable is how invisible
they are to the health sector and society at large, a reality rooted in
historical and social factors intersecting class, gender, and race. This
means that these workers hold less control over their working
conditions and do not benefit from the same regulations and state
protections, therefore facing greater health and security risks. As the
precarity and fear of loss of income loom large, workers are less likely
to organise and unionise, becoming more subjected to overexploitation,
poor working conditions, and job insecurity.</p>
<p>The pandemic has clearly exposed the longstanding attack on
healthcare and on the efforts to maintain free, public, quality service
for the people, and has unveiled the gender gap among the most
vulnerable health workers. We have no choice but to fight for a world
where workers are acknowledged and gender discrimination is abolished —
not just by cheering from our windows, but by winning tangible victories
for the working class.</p>
<h3><span><strong>Women Healthcare Workers on the Frontlines</strong></span></h3>
<p>Women make up the majority of healthcare workers, especially in nursing. According to the <a href="http://www.onumulheres.org.br/noticias/mulheres-e-covid-19-cinco-coisas-que-os-governos-podem-fazer-agora/">United Nations</a>
(UN), some estimates say that women represent 67 per cent of the global
healthcare workforce. Women also constitute the majority of workers in
the cleaning industry and, notably, in social services (90 per cent). In
the case of Brazil, 2 million of the 2.7 million people employed by the
country’s public healthcare system (the Unified Health System, SUS), or
75.4 per cent, are women. In terms of racial demographics, 34 per cent
of the SUS workforce is black; 8 per cent are black men, and 26 per cent
are black women.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that women make up the majority of the workforce,
the global healthcare industry is primarily led by men. According to the
<a href="https://www.who.int/es/news-room/feature-stories/detail/10-key-issues-in-ensuring-gender-equity-in-the-global-health-workforce">World Health Organisation</a>
(WHO), 69 per cent of global health organisations are headed by men;
only 20 per cent have reached gender parity on their boards and 25 per
cent have reached gender parity in senior management positions. The WHO
also showed that, while women in this sector work longer hours, they are
paid 11 per cent less than men.</p>
<p>In Argentina, the healthcare sector has historically been
characterised by the feminisation of technical, operational, and
cleaning work and the masculinisation of professional and leadership
positions. <a href="https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/20180918-fuerza-trabajo-sector-salud-2016.pdf">Available data</a>
shows that 82 per cent of nursing undergraduates, nurse technicians,
and nursing assistants are women. In recent decades, there has been a <a href="https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/20180918-fuerza-trabajo-sector-salud-2016.pdf">process</a>
of the ‘feminisation of the medical profession’, a shift from the
historically male-dominated field. Today, women make up 70 per cent of
healthcare professionals and the majority of medical students and
graduates. However, only 40 per cent of leadership positions are held by
women. In the private sector, the gender gap is even wider: only 13 per
cent of management positions are held by women workers.</p>
<p>Despite the process of feminisation of these occupations, the share
of women in leadership and management positions has not increased across
healthcare institutions, whether in hospitals, local and national
government health departments, professional associations, scientific
organisations, or labour unions. This also has a profound impact on the
wage gap, as women are paid 10 to 20 per cent less than men in the
healthcare industry, according to a 2018 <a href="https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/pnud_informedegenero_2018.04.04.pdf">report</a> by the United Nations Development Programme (Argentina).</p>
<h3><span><strong>Wages, Race, Gender, and the Invisible Side of Health Work</strong></span></h3>
<p>As in other fields, discrimination plays a major role in the
management of healthcare workers — a reality that arises out of the
patriarchal and neocolonial roots that shape the healthcare sector. The
impact is evident in gaps in pay, educational level, and leadership
positions between men and women and across racial lines. This reality
underlines the need to implement active policies that would lead to
gender and racial equality.</p>
<p>Around the world and in every industry, women are still paid <a href="https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/multimedia/maps-and-charts/enhanced/WCMS_650829/lang--en/index.htm">20 per cent</a>
less than men for doing the same work, and they are disproportionately
employed in lower-paying jobs. Women are still regarded as less
competent in the workplace, enjoy less prestige, are less likely to get
promoted, and have less access to basic labour protections such as
unionisation, safety, security, and decent wages. In Brazil, for
example, there is a sevenfold gap between the lowest and highest-paying
jobs in the public healthcare system. Overall, women are paid <a href="https://www.dieese.org.br/notatecnica/2020/notaTec236Saude.html">75 </a><a href="https://www.dieese.org.br/notatecnica/2020/notaTec236Saude.html">per cent</a> of what men make, and black women are paid as little as 60 per cent of what white men earn.</p>
<p>In addition to the disparity in pay between men and women, there is
also a disparity in access to formal healthcare job opportunities.
According to <a href="https://www.womeningh.org/5-asks">Women in Global Health</a>,
while female healthcare workers contribute to around US$3 trillion of
the global GDP, almost half of that work goes unacknowledged or unpaid;
much of this unpaid health work is carried out by women. In Argentina,
while <a href="https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/pnud_informedegenero_2018.04.04.pdf">77.1 </a><a href="https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/pnud_informedegenero_2018.04.04.pdf">per cent</a>
of healthcare workers have formal jobs and pay into pension schemes,
the rate among male workers is higher, at 81.3 per cent. There is a <a href="https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/pnud_informedegenero_2018.04.04.pdf">5.5 </a><a href="https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/pnud_informedegenero_2018.04.04.pdf">per cent</a>
gap between the number of men and women who are registered as medical
professionals — such as doctors — and other medical workers such as
nurses, social workers, and custodians, which in turn has implications
for the wage discrepancies between men and women in the healthcare
sector.</p>
<p>The role of women workers in popular economies<a name="_ftnref5">[5]</a>
has also come into the limelight during the pandemic, especially in
working-class areas. The health crisis has taken on a distinct shape in
urban settlements and peripheries — where people do not have access to
basic utility and public services, including water, electricity, and
sanitation — creating a breeding ground for the virus to spread in
precarious living conditions. It is the residents of these areas who
most urgently need access to basic healthcare, information, and services
during the pandemic.</p>
<p>In Argentina, women workers are on the frontline in working-class
neighbourhoods, promoting community health and surveying and aiding
older adults and individuals who live alone and who are at greater risk.
In coordination with health centres, hospitals, and healthcare
programmes, these women go from door to door testing residents and
guiding individuals and families who have to self-quarantine. Not only
are they managing the health crisis — they are also providing food
supplies, essential goods, and overall care to their communities. But
these community health workers — who often provide primary healthcare
but are not registered in the healthcare system — are also generally
unacknowledged and unpaid.</p>
<p>In South Africa, Community Health Workers (CHWs) — who have played a
fundamental role on the frontline yet often have temporary contracts —
staged a protest in July 2020, calling for full-time employment and
greater recognition of their contributions in public health
institutions. ‘How can we be relied on to screen and test communities
for COVID-19, yet not be allowed to share our perspectives from the
frontline at health forums?’ <a href="https://www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2020/09/28/underpaid-and-unprotected-the-case-for-supporting-community-health-workers/">asked</a> Noluthando Mhlongo, a CHW from KwaZulu-Natal.</p>
<p>Efforts to bring these realities and this essential work to the fore
are now starting to shape the policy conversation, in particular in
terms of advocating for professional training and to make sure they are
paid. We must give credence to their demands to be paid and recognised
for their work, and to be treated equally.</p>
<h3><span><strong>Informal Workers and Unemployment</strong></span></h3>
<p>Since the onset of the pandemic, most people have been faced with the
stark reality of how to provide for themselves and their families as
the economy shrinks further and further. This reality is particularly
stark for informal and unemployed workers and for women. Before the
pandemic, the informal economy was predominantly made up of women. Now,
masses of women workers are losing their jobs and income in the midst of
the pandemic.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_749398/lang--en/index.htm">International Labour Organisation</a>
(ILO), women are disproportionately employed in many of the industries
most severely affected by the crisis. Nearly 510 million (40 per cent)
of all women employed globally work in the four most affected
industries: hotels, restaurants, retail, and manufacturing. Women are
also predominantly employed in domestic work, healthcare, and social
services, putting them at a greater risk of contracting COVID-19 and of
losing their source of income if they become infected. They are also
less likely to have access to social protections.</p>
<p>The ILO <a href="https://www.ilo.org/brasilia/noticias/WCMS_744304/lang--pt/index.htm">indicates</a>
that the crisis could cause an increase in relative poverty rates in
Latin America and the Caribbean, especially among the number of informal
workers. Informal employment is characterised by unstable jobs, low
income, and no social protection to face health emergencies or
situations such as unemployment and a lack of labour rights.</p>
<p>When the formal sector closes its doors to women, they are left with
no other alternative but the informal sector (which women have
historically been forced to occupy), in which they are subjected to
precarious working conditions and low pay. Women are hit especially hard
as city authorities clamp down on street vendors and other informal
workers whose livelihoods depend on having access to public spaces.
According to available <a href="https://www.theigc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Resnick-et-al-2020-Policy-Brief.pdf">data</a>,
it is estimated that around 30–40 per cent of the total trade within
the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) is associated with
informal cross-border traders. In South Africa, informal and transborder
trading has come to a grinding halt across the country; thirty-five
land border posts were shut down, as well as other posts with
neighbouring countries, such as Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Scenes of women
shutting down their fruit stands have become common in places such as
the border town of Komatipoort in South Africa. These predominantly
women workers are left with no income; all they are left with is the
uncertainty of when they will be able to resume their work.</p>
<p>Even before the pandemic, more than 1.6 billion people — half of the
global workforce — worked in the informal sector, constantly faced with
the possibility of losing their livelihoods. As the United Nations <a href="https://news.un.org/pt/story/2020/06/1717342">estimates</a>, informal workers around the world lost 60 per cent of their income in the first month of the pandemic. The ILO <a href="https://www.ilo.org/brasilia/noticias/WCMS_744304/lang--pt/index.htm">estimates</a>
that these figures are even worse in Latin America and the Caribbean,
where informal workers’ income has been cut by 80 per cent in the same
time frame. Fifty-nine percent of informal workers in the region are
self-employed, while 31 per cent are employed by micro and small
enterprises. In Brazil alone, more than 600,000 micro and small
enterprises have been forced out of business since the pandemic began,
and unemployment is expected to increase twofold or maybe even fourfold
by the end of the year.</p>
<p>In India, according to the <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/documents/briefingnote/wcms_740877.pdf">ILO Monitor</a>,
nearly 90 per cent of the workforce is based in the informal sector,
making it the biggest workforce in the economy. The report also
indicates that the roughly 400 million workers belonging to India’s
informal sector will experience extreme poverty as the crisis <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/documents/briefingnote/wcms_740877.pdf">intensifies</a>. The precariousness of the informal sector disproportionately impacts women; <a href="https://www.newsclick.in/Women-Employment-Amid-Pandemic-Covid-19-Missing">94 per cent</a>
of the women who are counted as being part of the workforce in India
remain concentrated in the informal sector. Despite the huge number of
workers hailing from India’s informal sector — which contributes
significantly to the country’s GDP — their welfare has been tremendously
neglected. Workers in India are facing additional challenges as labour
laws are being weakened under the ruling government led by the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), including an attack on the eight-hour workday.</p>
<p>The ILO Monitor also <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/documents/briefingnote/wcms_745963.pdf">highlights</a>
that ‘94 per cent of the world’s workers were living in countries with
some sort of workplace closures’, many of whom have lost their jobs
during the pandemic. Amidst this are mounting levels of <a href="https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article31869839.ece">anxiety</a>
and depression brought on by the pandemic and the increasingly
precarious situation facing informal sector workers. On a global level,
‘More than half of young people surveyed had become vulnerable to
anxiety or depression since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. One in
six young people surveyed had stopped working, and 60 per cent of women
and 53 per cent of men in this survey viewed their career prospects with
uncertainty and fear. Young people who had discontinued working ran the
highest risk of anxiety and depression’.</p>
<p>The emergence of a new kind of gig economy is further
institutionalising precarity and informality. This new phenomenon, also
referred to as the ‘<a href="https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2020/03/08/a-crise-tem-rosto-de-mulher-precarizacao-e-desmonte-de-politicas-afetam-mais-elas">uberisation</a>’
of work, is the result of decades of changes in and the deterioration
of working conditions and job security. This process maximised
overexploitation by creating so-called <u>‘</u><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/the-rate-of-exploitation-the-case-of-the-iphone/">just-in-time</a><u>’</u>
labour, a system that requires workers to be constantly ready to report
to work, but only calls them to work when there is demand. They are
paid by the hour, or even the minute, for the time it takes to make a
delivery or finish a temporary service, which externalises the cost of
downtime to the workers rather than the company. This has had a
disproportionate impact on young workers as well as poor women (mostly
women of colour and/or migrants) and has become an unreliable source of
employment for a tremendous number of people as an alternative to the
shortage of jobs and lack of sources of income.</p>
<p>As these rates continue to increase, more and more people will be
forced into poverty across the world, hitting women especially hard.
They manage to scrape by with informal jobs, working in public spaces as
street vendors, garbage collectors, recyclers, small-scale farmers,
etc. Physical distancing and lockdown measures undermine the daily
livelihoods of these women — who are often the heads of their household —
as they cannot work from home, remotely, or online, and because many of
them rely on busy streets, public marketplaces, and small businesses.</p>
<h3><span><strong>Paid Domestic Work in the Global South</strong></span></h3>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ilo.org/brasilia/temas/trabalho-domestico/lang--pt/index.htm#:~:text=Fatos%20e%20n%C3%BAmeros%20no%20mundo,dos%20quais%2088%25%20s%C3%A3o%20mulheres.">67 million</a>
domestic workers across the world account for a key sector of the
informal workforce. This sector of the workforce — 80 per cent of whom
are women — accounts for the vast majority of the informal sector in
much of the world. In addition to suffering from many of the same
conditions as other informal workers — such as job insecurity and
precarious conditions — domestic workers are often deprived of the
scarce protections afforded to other precarious workers.</p>
<p>In India, most domestic workers are women and girls who have neither
bargaining power nor any guarantee of employment. They do not have any
of the social security benefits or legal protections that are guaranteed
to other workers — even those in the informal sector — such as a
minimum wage or allowances. High rates of illiteracy and a low level of
formal education have made them even more vulnerable to horrendous
working conditions, job insecurity, and low wages. The pandemic has <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/house-helps-left-without-help-amid-pandemic/article31586693.ece#!">exacerbated</a>
this vulnerability, as many have lost work or not been paid for their
services. According to the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), the <a href="https://thewire.in/labour/covid-19-lockdown-domestic-workers">official count</a> of domestic workers in India is 4.2 million. However, according to some <a href="https://thewire.in/labour/covid-19-lockdown-domestic-workers">studies</a>, the actual number is likely to be between 50 to 90 million — over ten times the official count.</p>
<p>In Latin America, one-third of informal workers are domestic workers.
In Brazil, women account for 97 per cent of domestic workers, earning
78.44 per cent of what men are paid for the same work — even though male
domestic workers comprise only 1 per cent of all men who work outside
the home. Among the approximately 7 million women domestic workers in
the country, nearly 5 million have no job security (and are therefore
subjected to informal employment) and are hired as day labourers. These
informal domestic workers are paid even less, earning 60 per cent less
than formally employed domestic workers.</p>
<p>In South Africa, the more than one million domestic workers, who are
also disproportionately women, account for 8 per cent of the country’s
workforce. Some domestic workers live in their employers’ homes, while
others endure long commutes every day from the outskirts of large cities
or neighbouring towns. While some have been granted paid leave and can
stay at home with their families during the pandemic, most day labourers
who carry out informal domestic work cannot survive if they practise
physical distancing. They are faced with two options: following public
safety protocols, staying home in the face of COVID-19, and facing
possible starvation and eviction, or breaking the guidelines, increasing
the risk of infection, and potentially securing a source of income.</p>
<p>As the economic crisis deepens, domestic workers are haunted by the
uncertainty of whether or not they will still have a job after the
quarantine. According to South African domestic workers’ <a href="https://www.groundup.org.za/article/job-cuts-lock-ins-and-fear-domestic-workers-suffer-covid-19-squeeze/">unions</a>,
the sector is one of the most susceptible to cuts as middle-class
families who employ them struggle to get by. Undocumented migrant women
are especially vulnerable.</p>
<p>Though the governments of several countries announced economic relief
plans, they were slow to introduce measures for the informal sector,
postponed their implementation, and cut down the amount of aid that
would be provided. Meanwhile, the rich have only been getting richer
during the pandemic. A recent Oxfam report <a href="https://www.oxfam.org.br/quem-paga-a-conta/">showed</a>
that, in Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, the wealth
accrued by the richest groups between March (the beginning of the
pandemic) and June of this year is equivalent to one-third of the funds
provided for economic stimulus packages implemented in the region. The
fortune of Latin America’s 73 billionaires surged by US$48.2 billion in
this time period, while massive numbers of people in the region lost
their jobs and sources of income. Between March and late July, eight new
billionaires emerged in the region — one every two weeks. Meanwhile, 40
million people are expected to lose their jobs and 52 million will be
forced into poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2020.</p>
<p>The neoliberal state is not at the service of humanity. The
capitalist logic disregards domestic workers, informal workers, and the
unemployed; it promises them the opportunity of success while delivering
only increased exploitation, lower pay, and more precarious lives. It
cannot support them through hunger and misery. This is a world where all
the ‘nobodies’ die, as Eduardo Galeano so eloquently wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p><em>The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. (…)</em></p>
<p><em>Who do not appear in the history of the world,</em> <em>but in the police blotter of the local paper.</em></p>
<p><em>The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.</em></p></blockquote>
<h3><span><strong>Rising </strong><strong>Social Vulnerability: Poverty, Evictions, and Forced Migration</strong></span></h3>
<p>The cruelty of the capitalist system and capitalist states has driven
humanity to its limit in the era of COVID-19. Though there was hope
that the poverty rate among women would <a href="https://news.un.org/pt/story/2020/09/1725032">fall</a> by 2.7 per cent between 2019 and 2021, as a result of the pandemic the rate is now projected to <em>increase</em>
by 9.1 per cent. This means that, by 2021, 96 million people will fall
into extreme poverty, 47 million of them women and girls. This will
increase the total number of women and girls in extreme poverty to 435
million people.</p>
<p>This is the result of policies adopted by capitalist states in this
period, driven by a concern for profits rather than a concern for
humanity. This direction stands in sharp contrast to the policies
implemented by parts of the world with socialist governments, from
Kerala (India) to Venezuela to Vietnam, as shown in a recent <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/studies-3-coronashock-and-socialism/">study</a> by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.</p>
<p>Among the heartless policies implemented during this period are the
evictions of individuals, families, and entire communities in the midst
of the pandemic. Women and children have lost their homes, and, as a
result, their livelihood, as was the case with families brutally <a href="https://mst.org.br/2020/08/12/policia-age-com-truculencia-durante-despejo-no-acampamento-quilombo-campo-grande/">evicted</a> from an <a href="https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2020/08/13/despejo-em-acampamento-do-mst-em-minas-gerais-e-denunciado-a-onu">MST encampment</a>
in Brazil in August of this year. The evictions that are underway in
South Africa, as well as the forced migration in India after the
lockdown was announced with little notice or state support, are two
examples of the reality faced by the majority of the world’s people in
capitalist states in the midst of the pandemic.</p>
<p>In India, the first phase of the lockdown was announced on 23 March
2020 with merely four hours’ notice, lasting for twenty-one days. The
lockdown, which would be continually extended, completely lacked a
proper roadmap for implementation; the questions of how people could
abide by the lockdown, where to go if they were left stranded, and how
to feed themselves and meet their basic needs for survival with a sudden
loss of income were left dangling in the air. As a result, India
witnessed the biggest on-foot <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/india-wracked-by-greatest-exodus-since-partition-due-to-coronavirus">migration</a>
since the Great Partition, when the subcontinent was divided into India
and Pakistan in 1947. While migration due to a lack of opportunities is
not new, the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown have brought this
hardship to light. According to the Economic Survey (2017), roughly <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/migrant-workers-india-lockdown-up-bihar-6467104/">139 million</a>
seasonal or circular migrants in India perform essential work that
allows the rest of the economy to run, from factories to office
buildings.</p>
<p>Despite this, migrants are often excluded from various government
schemes. Many are from rural areas but have moved to cities to find
work, and they rely on rented rooms for lodging and lack savings and
regular pay. A number of <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/dossier-28-coronavirus/">reports</a>
surfaced after the lockdown that portrayed the sufferings of the
migrant workers who were left stranded in big metropolitan cities with
no lodging, no food, and no income or savings to get home. Tens of
thousands were forced to walk hundreds of kilometres without any
transport facilities or other means to return to their villages and
hometowns during the initial period of the lockdown.</p>
<p>Identifying the government’s failure to respond to the situation of
migrant labourers, the Supreme Court intervened and issued its first<a href="https://main.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2020/11706/11706_2020_34_42_22217_Order_26-May-2020.pdf"> order</a> on 26 May, followed by an <a href="https://main.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2020/11706/11706_2020_34_24_22239_Order_28-May-2020.pdf">interim order</a> on 28 May and the <a href="https://main.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2020/11706/11706_2020_34_1501_22499_Order_09-Jun-2020.pdf">full order</a>
on 5 June. The orders emphasised the lapses where the government failed
to provide adequate means to the stranded migrant workers and failed to
facilitate their means of transport during the lockdown. As reported by
PRS Legislative Research, the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.prsindia.org/theprsblog/migration-india-and-impact-lockdown-migrants">ordered</a>
the central and the state governments to take responsibility for the
migrant crisis through a series of measures. This included providing
free food to stranded migrants, mandating that the state receiving
migrants pay for their transportation as soon as possible and within
fifteen days of issuing the order on 9 June, and ensuring that migrant
workers not pay train or bus fare.</p>
<p>Despite these orders, India’s situation continues to be grim as
millions of working-class people suffer and struggle every day for their
survival. The <a href="http://centreforequitystudies.org/reports/">report</a>
‘Labouring Lives: Hunger, Precarity and Despair amid the Pandemic’
documents the response of a number of migrant workers and sheds light on
the problems that they face. One stranded migrant recounted that:</p>
<p><em>Bhagwam bharose chal rha hai kyunki sarkar se koi umeed hai nahi; woh bas ghosana kr deti hai, mara jata hai gareeb </em>(‘We
are left to fend for ourselves because we don’t have any expectations
from the government. They just make sudden announcements; it is the poor
who pay the price)’<em>.</em></p>
<p>A similar situation has occurred in South Africa during the pandemic
as evictions are carried out throughout the country. In all of the major
cities across the country, municipal governments have evicted people
living in shacks in contravention both of the country’s laws, which
prohibit evictions carried out without a court order, and of the rules
governing the lockdown, which include a moratorium on evictions. In
Durban, Abahlali baseMjondolo, a movement of shack dwellers that is the
largest popular movement to have emerged in the country since the end of
apartheid, has been subjected to daily evictions during which there has
been considerable state violence; at times, live ammunition has been
fired at residents. The movement has more than 75,000 members in good
standing in Durban as of this year, the majority of whom are women, and
in many cases mothers, fighting to protect their homes.</p>
<p>Abahlali’s women’s organisation has issued two statements elaborating the gendered impact of evictions: ‘<a href="http://abahlali.org/node/17098/">Why this Suffering?</a>’ and ‘<a href="http://abahlali.org/node/17049/">Sekwanele! Enough is enough!</a>’. In the first statement, the women declare that:</p>
<p>We are afraid of the coronavirus, but there is no virus worse than
not having a place to stay. There is no virus worse than armed men
attacking and destroying your home. There is no virus worse than armed
men shooting at your family, including children and old people. There is
no virus worse than having to sleep outside, where there is always the
fear of rape. There is no virus worse than our children waking up at
night crying and shouting in fear.</p>
<p>Together, these statements note that evictions place women at a very
high risk of sexual assault when they have to sleep out in the open
after evictions. Evictions cause tremendous stress and anxiety for
children, the impact of which is largely managed by women, and some
women have lost male partners due to such state violence.</p>
<p>Ordinary forms of organisation such as meetings, street protests, and
the like are impossible during the shutdown. It is incredibly difficult
to access legal support or to prepare for court actions for a number of
reasons: it is difficult to travel, police stations have refused to
certify documents and to sign affidavits, and so on. For women who no
longer have any income during the shutdown, online organisation is also
impossible. It is vitally important that organisations staffed by
middle-class gender activists remain acutely aware of just how difficult
it is for women who have lost their income during this crisis to
organise under the lockdown.</p>
<p>Holding the line of the fragile gains made by grassroots women’s
rights activists in previous waves of struggle will require focus and
fortitude. It will also require that an incisive gender lens be cast on
every move by the government and the state in the coming months.</p>
<h3><span><strong>The Impact of CoronaShock on LGBTQIA+ People</strong></span></h3>
<p>As we have discussed, the impact of COVID-19 is far from equal in
communities across the globe. The worst effects of the virus have been
felt by marginalised communities along the lines of class, race, sexual
orientation, gender, and — notably — gender identity. The pre-existing
conditions caused by transphobia, heavily compounded by class and race,
put transgender people in the crosshairs of COVID-19. In this section,
we will briefly outline some of major challenges facing the LGBTQIA+ and
especially the transgender community across the world in the midst of
the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>The first challenge in measuring the impact of COVID-19 on the
transgender community is that data is largely unavailable. This is no
accident: despite the objective impacts of discrimination, patriarchal
violence, and marginalisation on the material lives of transgender
people, they remain largely invisible. In the United States, <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-will-track-coronavirus-toll-on-15440375.php">California</a>
became one of the few states to collect data on the impact of the
pandemic on the transgender community in July. In Brazil, federal data
on the <a href="https://www.ilga-lac.org/coronapapers.pdf">12.9 million unemployed</a> leaves out any mention of transgender people, as do government reports of the <a href="https://www.folhape.com.br/noticias/pesquisa-nacional-busca-impactos-da-pandemia-do-novo-coronavirus-na-po/142760/">53 per cent</a>
increase in homelessness in the city of São Paulo over the last four
years (from 15.9 thousand people in 2015 compared to 42.3 thousand
people in 2019). While it is impossible to fully quantify the impact of
the pandemic on transgender people, support networks in the transgender
community see this reality in their lives and on the streets, <a href="https://www.ilga-lac.org/coronapapers.pdf">pointing</a> to disproportionately high numbers of transgender people among the unemployed and unhoused.</p>
<p>This disparity starts early in life, as many LGBTQIA+ and especially transgender children are <a href="https://www.huesped.org.ar/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/OSI-informe-FINAL.pdf">expelled</a>
from their homes by unsupportive families, resulting in a lower level
of education and professional skills required by much of the formal
sector — a factor further compounded by discrimination. Transgender
people are often forced to stay in the closet or risk losing their jobs,
leading to much higher levels of depression, anxiety, and suicide. One <a href="https://www.huesped.org.ar/noticias/informe-situacion-trans/">survey</a>
of 498 transgender people (452 transgender women and 46 transgender
men) reported that, in Argentina, 40 per cent transgender men have
attempted suicide at some point in their lives, and one-third of
transgender women have attempted suicide, beginning on average at the
age of 13 for transgender men and 16 for transgender women. Another <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/08/18/coronavirus-transgender/?arc404=true">survey</a>
in the United States among 27,715 transgender people found that 40 per
cent of those surveyed had attempted suicide at some point in their
lifetime — 8 times higher than the rate of the population as a whole. As
many schools shut down and pivot to online learning, transgender
children in unsupportive home environments remain trapped with their
abusers.</p>
<p>In the era of COVID-19, that means that unhoused children and adults
are at a higher risk of exposure to COVID-19 and have a lower level of
access to care if they contract the virus. Some <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/covid-19-lockdown-transgender-community-pushed-further-to-the-margin/article31265535.ece">accounts</a> point out that, unlike many migrants, who <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/dossier-28-coronavirus/">scrambled</a>
to travel home in great numbers with scarce funds in the midst of
tremendous adversity, transgender children and adults often have no home
or family to travel to. Many transgender people are <a href="https://rosanjose.iom.int/site/en/blog/what-impact-covid-19-lgbti-migrants">migrants</a>
themselves, as we have seen with the crisis at the United States-Mexico
border, where migrants who survive the treacherous journey are kept in
squalid, overcrowded detention centres.</p>
<p>In South Africa, COVID-19 has brought such complex ongoing struggles
for sexual and gender minority refugees to light. Victor Chikalogwe, the
gender and LGBTQIA+ refugee project coordinator at People Against
Suffering, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP), notes that the severe and
prolonged trauma that queer refugees experienced in their home countries
is compounded once individuals attempt to settle in South Africa. In an
<a href="https://www.newframe.com/queer-refugees-battle-covid-19-on-top-of-prejudice/">article</a> in <em>New Frame</em>,
Chikalogwe notes that, ‘unlike many refugees who can rely on the
support of their communities or compatriots, it’s not usually possible
for sexual and gender minority refugees to do that. So without that
support, it can be much harder for them’.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, given this reality, transgender people are disproportionately unhoused. According to one <a href="https://www.tiempoar.com.ar/nota/el-impacto-de-la-pandemia-en-el-colectivo-trans-travesti-y-lgbti">survey</a>,
in Buenos Aires (Argentina), 65 per cent of transgender people live in
precarious, state-subsidised hotel rooms inhabited by people who cannot
afford rent; 22.5 per cent rent their homes; and 6.6 per cent live in
shelters or on the street — only 5.9 per cent own their own home.
Discrimination plays a large role, as transgender people are often
denied stable housing opportunities or faced with predatory landlordism
and exorbitant fees. Florencia, a transgender woman, recounts that, ‘We
don’t have proof of income, and we are faced with the stigma that
transgender women will rent and then convert the place into a brothel,
so they charge us double or triple what they charge others in rent’.</p>
<p>In Hyderabad (India), posters warned that talking to transgender
people might expose them to contracting COVID-19. Based on nothing but
transphobia and fear, such rumours have nevertheless had concrete
consequences: as a result, <em>The Hindu</em> <a href="https://frontline.thehindu.com/dispatches/article31463945.ece">reports</a>, ‘housing complexes ask[ed] transgenders to vacate their rented accommodation’.</p>
<p>Transgender people are also systematically excluded from the formal
labour market and are most often left with the option of sex work or
begging. For example, shortly after South Africa was placed under a
national lockdown in March 2020, the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy
Taskforce (SWEAT) <a href="https://www.chr.up.ac.za/images/centrenews/2020/Human_rights_organisations_call_on_South_African_government_to_address_the_plight_of_sex_workers_during_COVID-19_crisis_in_the_interest_of_all_South_Africans.pdf">announced</a>
on 6 May that sex workers, many of whom are transgender, were ‘the most
marginalised of all workers because their profession is not recognised
as work in South Africa’. According to Larissa Heüer, Academic Associate
at the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, sex
workers’ illegal status renders them especially vulnerable to abuse by
police, healthcare providers, and clients. Heüer highlighted how sex
workers’ lack of access to justice creates poor and dangerous working
conditions and furthers their continued stigmatisation within South
African society. The loss of income precipitated by the pandemic only
aggravated already worsening conditions and crises such as the loss of
shelter and the inability to access food, medication, and other basic
necessities.</p>
<p>In Argentina, <a href="https://elpais.com/economia/2020-05-15/el-estigma-no-esta-en-cuarentena-cual-es-el-impacto-de-la-covid-19-en-la-comunidad-lgbti.html">90 per cent</a> of transgender women work or have worked as sex workers, and only one in ten transgender women and men have some form of <a href="https://www.huesped.org.ar/noticias/informe-situacion-trans/">retirement benefit</a>. In the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-52716776">words</a>
of one Panamanian sex worker, Monica, who supports her family and two
sisters with her income, ‘many transgender people work as sex workers
here in the city. Is it our first option? No. But it is regular work and
it means I can take care of my family’. Like street vendors, the impact
of physical distancing and quarantine has essentially evaporated the
income of sex workers and beggars.</p>
<p>Compounding this is the fact that many transgender people do not have
basic identification documentation and, as Divya Trivedi of <em>Frontline </em><a href="https://frontline.thehindu.com/dispatches/article31463945.ece">writes</a>
on the situation of the transgender community in India, they ‘therefore
remain outside the coverage of government social security schemes like
rations and pensions, making it impossible to survive in these difficult
times of lockdown’. This lack of documentation also <a href="https://frontline.thehindu.com/dispatches/article31463945.ece">excludes</a>
them from basic aid programmes, such as the scarce financial and food
assistance provided by the government, as well as government social
security schemes such as pensions.</p>
<p>In Brazil, much of the LGBTQIA+ and in particular transgender
community does not have the necessary identification documentation to
access the little aid provided by the government. Transgender people are
among the 40 per cent of the black population in Brazil that is unable
to access the internet, providing a huge barrier to sign up for the aid
to begin with.</p>
<p>Excluded from the formal workforce, expelled from family support
networks, and denied government aid, transgender people are much more
likely to suffer from pre-existing medical conditions and less likely to
receive medical care should they fall ill. In Brazil, the average <a href="https://www.folhape.com.br/noticias/pesquisa-nacional-busca-impactos-da-pandemia-do-novo-coronavirus-na-po/142760/">life expectancy</a> for transgender people is <em>35-years-old, </em>compared
to the average of 76.3-years-old for the general population, according
to the National Association of Transgender People (<em>Associação Nacional de Travestis e Transexuais</em>).</p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.who.int/hiv/topics/transgender/about/en/">World Health Organisation</a>,
on a global level, transgender women are ‘around 49 times more likely
to be living with HIV than other adults of reproductive age with an
estimated worldwide HIV prevalence of 19%’. This disparity is even
higher in some countries, where the HIV prevalence rate among
transgender women is 80 times higher than the rate among the general
adult population. Those who are HIV/AIDS positive may have a compromised
immune system, putting them at a higher risk of dying from COVID-19, as
one <a href="https://transequality.org/covid19">report</a> notes.</p>
<p>In Brazil, <a href="https://www.ilga-lac.org/coronapapers.pdf">60 per cent</a>
of those killed by HIV/AIDS are black homosexual men. Following a
common theme, the WHO notes that there is little data available on HIV
rates among transgender men. Furthermore, many HIV-positive people do
not disclose their status for fear of discrimination, putting formal
estimates at risk of underreporting. The lack of access to stable jobs
and health services contributes to such illnesses often going untreated
or undertreated and being more likely to get <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/LGBT/LGBTIpeople_ES.pdf">pushed to the side</a> as the treatment of COVID-19 cases takes priority.</p>
<p>Furthermore, historic barriers such as <a href="https://www.cels.org.ar/web/2020/06/los-derechos-humanos-de-la-poblacion-travesti-y-trans-en-aislamiento-obligatorio/">discrimination</a> keep many transgender people from seeking medical care. One <a href="https://www.huesped.org.ar/noticias/informe-situacion-trans/">study</a> in Argentina shows that, up until the recent passage of the <a href="https://www.huesped.org.ar/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ley-de-Identidad-de-Genero-y-acceso-a-la-salud-de-personas-trans-ING.pdf">Gender Identity Law</a>
(2012), seven out of ten transgender people relied on the public health
system, and eight out of ten transgender people experienced
discrimination based on their gender identity (though this number has
decreased to three out of ten after the implementation of this law).
Walking into a hospital to seek care often means being subjected to
harassment, sneers, denial of care, and even physical and sexual <a href="https://www.huesped.org.ar/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/OSI-informe-FINAL.pdf">abuse</a>.</p>
<p>Exclusion from healthcare is further compounded by what some refer to as a ‘<a href="https://www.ilga-lac.org/coronapapers.pdf">transgenocide</a>’,
officially sanctioned by the state and public policies. One recent
example in the United States, where the Trump administration attempted
to roll back non-discrimination protections for transgender people in
healthcare in June, resulted in a record level of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/08/18/coronavirus-transgender/?arc404=true">calls</a> to transgender crisis lines, which had already skyrocketed by 40 per cent since the beginning of the pandemic. Though a judge <a href="http://politico.com/news/2020/08/17/judge-trump-rollback-transgender-health-397332">halted</a> Trump’s efforts in August, his administration has succeeded in rolling back other <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/trump-s-controversial-transgender-military-policy-goes-effect-n993826">protections</a>, and the constant threat of increased precariousness looms over the transgender community.</p>
<p>Some countries, on the other hand, have implemented public policies
to protect the LGBTQIA+ community during the pandemic, in particular to
address the precarious situation faced by many transgender people. In
Argentina, the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity, in coordination
with organisations of civil society, has reinforced food assistance to
LGBTQIA+ people by delivering food during the quarantine. Along the same
lines, transgender people have been incorporated into social assistance
programmes implemented by the national government during the pandemic.
On 4 September, the federal government passed the <a href="https://www.pagina12.com.ar/289805-cupo-laboral-trans-en-el-estado-por-decreto-sera-del-1-por-c">Transgender Work Quota Law </a>(<em>Cupo Laboral Travesti Trans</em>),
which mandates that at least 1 per cent of the workforce of federal
public administration must be made up of transgender people.</p>
<p>A recent <a href="https://www.ilga-lac.org/coronapapers.pdf">law</a>
in Brazil shows the absolute callousness of the state towards the poor,
working class, people of colour, the LGBTQIA+ community, and other
marginalised groups by allowing cremation without a death certificate,
giving a carte blanche for the state to burn and disappear unclaimed
bodies. Even with the lack of data, we can imagine that transgender
people who have been kicked out of their homes, disowned by their
families, excluded from the job market, forced to work in precarious
sectors — such as sex work — amidst the pandemic or to starve, are among
these bodies. As Brazil becomes a global epicentre of COVID-19
infections and deaths, some have charged the state, under the leadership
of Jair Bolsonaro, with <a href="https://thewire.in/world/brazil-covid-19-jair-bolsonaro-genocide-negligence">genocide</a>.</p>
<p>This section barely scratches the surface of the impacts of COVID-19
on the LGBTQIA+ community, much of which remains invisible and ignored.
In the face of these issues, activists, grassroots community groups, and
non-governmental organisations are calling on the government to
decriminalise sex work, provide relief and food aid, provide emergency
housing to unhoused transgender and queer people, and to support
non-national and undocumented migrant communities in their efforts to
access essential services for their survival. Whether their calls will
be heeded remains to be seen.</p>
<h2><span><strong> II. </strong><strong>Care Work and CoronaShock</strong></span></h2>
<p>Care work is work. It is work that provides the material and
psychological conditions to serve our basic needs and our human
development as a society. It encompasses the continuous tasks carried
out to maintain and care for the environment, the body, the being, and
everything that is necessary to intertwine a complex network to support
life and its reproduction. Among these tasks are caring for children,
the elderly, and people with mental or physical illnesses/disabilities
alongside household chores such as cooking, washing, and cleaning. While
this work is essential for the reproduction of the labour force — a
fundamental commodity for capital — it is usually underpaid or even
unpaid, and almost always unacknowledged.</p>
<p>A recent Oxfam <a href="https://www.oxfam.org.br/justica-social-e-economica/forum-economico-de-davos/tempo-de-cuidar/">report</a>
(2020) shows that women are responsible for 75 per cent of the unpaid
care work carried out across the world. That is more than 12.5 billion
hours that women and girls around the planet spend doing this kind of
work every year. According to the report, this is the equivalent of
approximately US$10.8 trillion of unpaid care work per year that
subsidises the global economy — three times the size of the global tech
industry.</p>
<p>In rural communities and low-income countries, women dedicate up to <a href="https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620928/bp-time-to-care-inequality-200120-en.pdf">14 hours</a>
to unpaid care work every day — five times more than men. In South
Africa, on average, women do three times more care work at home than
men. In Brazil, 90 per cent of the care work is done in the household,
85 percent of which is carried out by women. In 2019, women dedicated on
average <a href="https://www.ibge.gov.br/estatisticas/sociais/trabalho/17270-pnad-continua.html?edicao=27762&t=resultados">21.4 hours</a>
per week to care work, while men dedicated only 11 hours per week.
Women who work outside the home dedicated on average 8.2 more hours per
week to household chores than men who work outside the home.</p>
<p>The scale of care and housework has only increased during the
pandemic. As quarantine and physical distancing measures are enforced,
the necessity of care work has become increasingly visible as people are
spending more time at home, caring not only for their house, but also
for themselves, their families, loved ones, neighbours, and even their
community. Following the recommended guidelines for cleaning in order to
fight COVID-19 takes an extra effort: constantly cleaning and wiping
down objects and surfaces and washing clothes upon coming home, caring
for and becoming substitute teachers for children who are not going to
school, caring for more people as they fall sick and stay at home (even
when they are healthy), cooking most meals, tidying up as the house
becomes more messy, and having restricted or no access to leisure and
communal spaces such as churches, parks, bars, public squares, and
businesses. All of this care work has increased exponentially, and the
extra burden continues to fall on women.</p>
<p>A recent <a href="http://mulheresnapandemia.sof.org.br/">survey</a> carried out by <em>Gênero e Número</em> and <em>Sempreviva Organização Feminista</em></p>
<p>on the life and work of women in Brazil during the pandemic estimates
that 50 per cent of Brazilian women have had to take on the
responsibility of caring for someone since the outbreak; 72 per cent of
these women say that this caregiving takes the form of intensive care
and close monitoring, as is often the case with children, older adults,
and people with severe disabilities or illnesses. Moreover, 40 per cent
of women say that the pandemic, lockdown, and stay-at-home measures have
put their own and their households’ livelihoods at risk; this is
especially the case for black women, 55 per cent of whom reported that
their and their households’ livelihoods are at risk. Meanwhile, 41 per
cent of the women who have continued to work and get paid say that they
are working longer hours without additional compensation during the
quarantine.</p>
<p>Even women who are able to work from home face daunting challenges as
their remote work and housework coalesce into a seemingly endless chain
of overlapping tasks. The time to tidy up, clean, wash, and cook adds
onto their other demands: mothers manage their children’s education at
home, and the daughters of ill and/or elderly parents become their
primary caregivers, taking on the roles that used to be shared with
childcare centres, schools, and other institutions as the separation
between home and work vanishes. Work that requires high focus, for
example, does not go well with being constantly disturbed at home. After
shelter-in-place measures were implemented in several parts of the
world, editorial teams of scientific publications <a href="http://dados.iesp.uerj.br/pandemia-reduz-submissoes-de-mulheres/">reported</a>
a sharp drop in paper submissions by women academics on a global level,
while papers submitted by male academics increased by nearly 50 per
cent.</p>
<p>Care work at home is not only continuous but it also requires other
considerations. Caregivers have to consider the activities of the other
people around them — not only those they care for, but also the noises,
the distractions, and the demand for attention. The mental load of love
and emotional care is also among the roles assigned to women in private
life. Women continue to shoulder the same tasks and emotional labour
they did before the pandemic — only now this work has become even more
gruelling.</p>
<p>Home is not just a space of private relationships, but also of the
production and reproduction of social behaviours, rules, and values, as
well as of hierarchies and the sexual division of labour. When these
rules mean that the care work done at home should be a woman’s job, this
jeopardises their paid work, their economic autonomy, and their chances
at professional improvement when compared to men.</p>
<p>It is no coincidence that, globally, women make up the largest share
of the informal sector, as they have to bear the additional
responsibility of unpaid care and housework. According to an <a href="https://www.oxfam.org.br/justica-social-e-economica/forum-economico-de-davos/tempo-de-cuidar/">Oxfam report</a>,
around the world, approximately 42 per cent of women are unable to find
a job because all of their time is dedicated to care and housework,
while only 6 per cent of men face the same issue.</p>
<p>Additionally, the idea that women’s social role is historically
related to care work has resulted in a kind of professional
qualification in which working and lower-middle class women are
channelled, as the Brazilian sociologist Heleieth Saffioti wrote in <a href="https://archive.org/details/womeninclasssoci0000saff_s3r8"><em>Women in Class Society</em></a>,
first published in 1967, ‘into second-rate, poorly paid jobs with no
prospects for advancement’ that give them low prestige and little social
acknowledgment (Saffioti, 1978, p. 64). Saffioti concludes that ‘Since a
woman’s occupation is of secondary importance in her life, she has
neither the motivation nor the time to concentrate effectively on
improving her bargaining status on the labour market through union
activities’ (Saffioti, 1978, p. 66).</p>
<p>In Brazil, the IBGE <a href="https://www.oxfam.org.br/justica-social-e-economica/forum-economico-de-davos/tempo-de-cuidar/#:~:text=Em%202050%2C%20o%20Brasil%20ter%C3%A1,85%25%20%C3%A9%20feito%20por%20mulheres.">estimates</a>
that, between children and the elderly, there will be nearly 77 million
dependents who will need care by 2050 (just over one-third of the
country’s population). Society as a whole should be concerned about who
will shoulder this responsibility, considering that the course of
history could maintain women in that position. This same scenario is
unfolding around the world.</p>
<p>Immediate solutions to the crisis are not difficult to find. As Oxfam <a href="https://www.oxfam.org.br/justica-social-e-economica/forum-economico-de-davos/tempo-de-cuidar/#:~:text=Em%202050%2C%20o%20Brasil%20ter%C3%A1,85%25%20%C3%A9%20feito%20por%20mulheres.">points out</a>,
if the world’s richest 1 per cent paid an additional 0.5 per cent tax
on their wealth for the next 10 years, that money could create 117
million jobs in education, health, and elder care. But — given the
realities of class domination — there is no real chance of this
happening in the foreseeable future. Instead, throughout the pandemic,
capitalist states have granted astounding financial aid to big banks and
corporations. Governments that have discussed incorporating a wealth
tax, such as Argentina and Chile, have been met with strong resistance
by the most powerful elite, which has so far prevented such a tax from
being implemented.</p>
<p>From this we begin to understand what feminists like Alexandra Kollontai <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm">explained</a>
almost a century ago: ‘Capitalism has placed a crushing burden on
woman’s shoulders: it has made her a wage-worker without having reduced
her cares as housekeeper or mother.’</p>
<h3><span><strong>‘Women’s Work’ as a Social Construct</strong></span></h3>
<p>Despite efforts to convince us otherwise, the fact that women take on
these responsibilities is not ‘natural’. The situation of women in
class society is the result of the imposition of two different sets of
values of a natural and social order. The natural order is based on
biological factors, whereby (in order to control their labour) society
assigns care work to women based on their proximity to motherhood, which
arises from their ability to experience pregnancy and breastfeeding.
But, as Saffioti stated in <a href="https://archive.org/details/womeninclasssoci0000saff_s3r8"><em>Women in Class Society</em></a><em>, </em>‘Indeed,
since the survival of society is contingent on the birth and rearing of
new generations, it should bear at least part of the cost of
motherhood, or find satisfactory solutions to the occupational problems
that maternity creates for women’ (Saffioti 1978, p. 59).</p>
<p>In the 1970s, a global feminist social movement emerged along these
lines promoting the Wages for Housework campaign, which also advocated
for the right to equal pay for equal work and parental leave. Created in
Europe, it spread across the United States, Italy, England, and other
countries in Europe and in the Global South, spearheaded by Selma James,
Silvia Federici, Leopoldina Fortunati, and others. The campaign also
condemned the sexual division of labour and the process of assigning
more importance and a certain hierarchy to different tasks, which
devalues reproductive care work. Despite the fact that it is key for the
production and reproduction of human life, reproductive work has long
been seen as unproductive and has been devalued and unrecognised; as a
result, it has also been excluded from remuneration. In a society in
which money is the medium of all interactions, women’s access to certain
goods and services vastly decreases and their power is systematically
undermined. As long as their place is in domestic work, which often
remains unpaid, women will be economically subordinated to men.</p>
<p>Echoing Friedrich Engels’ analysis in <em>The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, </em>Angela Davis expanded on this point, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/davis-angela/housework.htm">writing</a> in <em>Women, Race and Class</em> that this hierarchisation of labour came alongside the development of capitalism and private property:</p>
<p>In advanced capitalist societies … the service-oriented domestic
labour of housewives, who can seldom produce tangible evidence of their
work, diminishes the social status of women in general. When all is said
and done, the housewife, according to bourgeois ideology, is, quite
simply, her husband’s lifelong servant.</p>
<p>The engrained and structural subordination of women, then, is part
and parcel of the capitalist mode of production and the bottomless greed
of the capitalist, who seeks to subsidise his profits and the cost of
production with unpaid reproductive labour — labour that is
predominantly carried out by women.</p>
<p>The sexual division of labour is a social construct within the
general division of labour, in which certain tasks have historically
been delegated differently between men and women. Under capitalism, this
division is indisputably unequal, as certain roles are regarded as
primarily masculine (in the political, religious, and military realms,
for example) while others are set apart as feminine (roles related to
reproduction, service work, and caring for the household and family
unit). In order to maintain control over this unequal organisation of
the workforce, the tasks performed by men are granted more value in
terms of prestige and pay. Therefore, the sexual division of labour is
based on two organising principles. First, the distinction between what
constitutes ‘men’s work’ and ‘women’s work’, and, second, the hierarchy
that attributes more value to ‘men’s work’. That structure upholds
gender inequality and the overexploitation and oppression of women
through their work and role in society.</p>
<p>As a result of the sexual division embedded in the social logic of
labour, house and care work are continuously undervalued and rendered
invisible. This has not only proved useful to capitalism, as it allows
this work to remain almost unquestionably unpaid, but it also feeds off
of the psychological effects on women, who view themselves as having a
social fate that is deeply determined by their biological sex, and by
what society allows or demands them to do based on that.</p>
<p>CoronaShock opens an opportunity to spark a global debate about the
essential nature of care work. Care work has long remained invisible to
those who benefit from its status as unpaid labour and who are
responsible for perpetuating this exploitative structure: the
bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie has always been unwilling to question the
sexual division of labour and to foster a social, collective
responsibility for reproductive work. The bourgeoisie reaps billions of
dollars from unpaid reproductive work every year and absolves the state
from taking the responsibility for care work; as a class, the
bourgeoisie moves a political agenda to privatise services and cut
social investments, placing the burden of those roles on households —
and on women.</p>
<p>The women who most acutely feel the impact of this burden are women
of colour, poor women, and immigrant women. They clean, wash, nurture,
and care for everyone and everything, and are responsible for the roles
that allow for the social reproduction of humanity. Underappreciating
this work serves a purpose for capital. The war waged by the 1 per cent
against the 99 per cent seems to have no limits — but its invisibility
does.</p>
<h3><span><strong>The 99% versus the 1%</strong></span></h3>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.ilo.org/brasilia/temas/covid-19/lang--pt/index.htm">ILO</a>,
most of the world’s workers — around 93 per cent — live in countries
with some level of economic shutdown and job loss. Countries in the
Global South are experiencing the worst cuts. It is the masses who have
to leave their homes to work and seek — or desperately try to maintain —
some source of income because they do not have savings to weather the
quarantine during the pandemic without the intervention of the state.
The failure of the state to provide basic income or emergency aid across
much of the world — with important <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/studies-3-coronashock-and-socialism/">exceptions</a>
in regions such as Cuba, Venezuela, Kerala (India), and Vietnam — has
exposed the neoliberal system’s concern for profit over humanity’s
concern for life.</p>
<p>The richest sectors of society generally have not granted paid leave
to their employees during the pandemic, even when the WHO recommended
physical distancing practices and quarantine. Many workers, such as
domestic workers and service employees, have had to continue to care for
the homes, bodies, health, and well-being of the rich. While workers
are forced to put themselves at risk, it is their employers who are able
to stay safe at home per WHO recommendations.</p>
<p>A number of other factors put the poor and working class at an
increased risk of falling ill and dying: among them, a lack of access to
quality healthcare and a higher probability of pre-existing risk
factors due to the structural attack on poor and working class
communities — from asthma induced by coal plants and pollution kept away
from wealthier areas by ‘Not In My Backyard’ movements to chronic
issues caused by precarious working conditions. It is not a coincidence
that the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-rio/a-brazilian-woman-caught-coronavirus-on-vacation-her-maid-is-now-dead-idUSKBN21B1HT">first person to die from COVID-19</a>
in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was a 63-year-old female
domestic worker. Her employer had recently returned from a trip to Italy
and neglected to tell her about the possibility of being infected.
While the employer self-quarantined, she refused to allow the domestic
worker to go home; the worker continued to work in the employer’s
apartment in one of the country’s most expensive neighbourhoods. The
employer had COVID-19 and infected this worker, who eventually died.</p>
<p>There have been reports of many other cases of domestic workers whose
employers did not grant them leave, even when they had to face long
commutes in public transportation and overcrowded buses and trains
between home and work. There are also cases of people who knew they were
infected and required their domestic workers to continue to work. While
employers clearly perceived the need to keep a clean house and the need
for domestic and care work, the value of those workers’ lives remained
invisible to them. This provides a snapshot of social inequality: some
remain steadfast that their lives are worth more than the lives of the
predominantly women workers who provide services to them, a logic that
is supported and encouraged by capitalist societies.</p>
<p>The COVID-19 crisis has created an opening to give new meaning to
both the value of labour and the value of the lives of the women who
care for the reproduction and maintenance of our society. We must
recognise and remunerate this invisible labour, understanding that all
people have the right to be cared for. This means advancing access to
care that is outside family networks and outside the commodity form;
this kind of care must cease to be the privilege of a few and instead
become a human right.</p>
<p>Some countries and regions have pushed forward the creation of
federal systems of care that attempt to respond to these concerns, as is
the case in Uruguay and Argentina. In Argentina, the creation of the
Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity is a step forward in the
discussion about the organisation of care work. Since the beginning of
this year, the Ministry has been working on a Federal Care Map (<em>Mapa Federal de Cuidados</em>)
in order to plan care-related public policies, which seek to reverse
the gender inequality that is hidden in the current social organisation
of care.</p>
<h2><span><strong>III. The Rise of Patriarchal Violence<a name="_ftnref6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> Under CoronaShock</strong></span></h2>
<p>Before the pandemic, we already faced a global reality in which, on average, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/geral-46343858">137 women</a> were killed every day by someone in their family. UN Women <a href="http://www.onumulheres.org.br/noticias/novo-relatorio-da-onu-mulheres-apresenta-uma-agenda-politica-para-acabar-com-a-desigualdade-de-genero-nas-familias/">estimates</a>
that one in five women between the ages of 15 and 49 around the world
has experienced some type of physical or sexual assault by their
partner. It is not a coincidence that, by the end of the twentieth
century, fighting violence against women became the biggest demand for
many women’s movements across the world. As impossible as it may seem,
patriarchal violence has become significantly worse since the initiation
of shelter-in-place measures. Over the last few years, we have also
seen an increase in transfemicides across the world, propelled forward
by a rise of hate speech and anti-human rights ideology.</p>
<p>While rates of gender-based violence are known to be high, especially
in the Global South, it is challenging to find accurate statistics.
However, we do know that, during times of emergencies and lockdowns,
these rates go up, as has been the case during the current state of
shelter-in-place orders due to COVID-19. Unemployment, overcrowding,
remote work, an overburden of reproductive work, increasing
impoverishment, a crisis of one’s ability to maintain one’s economic
livelihood, and drug and alcohol abuse are some of the elements that
exacerbate gender-based violence — even more so during the pandemic.
Women’s groups warn that lockdown conditions may be used by abusers to
control the behaviour of their partners, blocking their access to
security and support.</p>
<p>Feminist activists and political authorities who know this history
anticipated the gendered impacts of physical distancing and quarantine
measures enforced around the world, warning early on that these measures
could hit women particularly hard. Gender-based violence flourishes on
the social isolation of victims. A key aspect that impacts women who
face domestic violence is that they often become deprived of all social
and professional bonds, growing apart from family, friends, and
colleagues, which in turn increases their dependence on their abusers.
For this reason, supporting women who are experiencing gender-based
violence must include the important task of rebuilding a support network
that can help them emotionally so that they can regain economic,
emotional, cognitive, and housing autonomy.</p>
<p>In Brazil — a country where one woman was <a href="https://fpabramo.org.br/2011/02/11/violencia-domestica/">assaulted</a> every 15 seconds on average <em>before</em>
the pandemic — femicide rates (the killing of women because of their
gender) have surged in 2020 compared to previous years. The state of São
Paulo, for example, <a href="https://forumseguranca.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/violencia-domestica-covid-19-v3.pdf">reported</a>
a 46.2 per cent rise from March 2019 to March 2020, while femicide
rates increased by 300 per cent in the state of Rio Grande do Norte and
by 400 per cent in the state of Mato Grosso. Police responses to
domestic abuse calls increased by 44 per cent in the state of São Paulo
alone, and the number of abusers caught red-handed in the state
increased by 51 per cent. These numbers only reflect the cases that are
reported to the police — many other cases go unreported and are not
included in these statistics. In Argentina, approximately one femicide
was reported every day in the first month of shelter-in-place orders, <a href="https://ahoraquesinosven.com.ar/reports/femicidios-agosto-2020">66 </a><a href="https://ahoraquesinosven.com.ar/reports/femicidios-agosto-2020">per cent</a> of which took place in the victim’s home.</p>
<p>In South Africa, prior to the pandemic, femicide rates were <a href="https://africacheck.org/reports/five-facts-femicide-in-south-africa/">five times</a>
the global average. However, the country does not produce statistics
that appropriately reflect upon analyses or data of gender-based
violence, supposedly because it is difficult to gather reliable data on
the issue. From April 2018 to March 2019, the South African police <a href="https://www.saps.gov.za/services/april_to_march2018_19_presentation.pdf#page=118">reported</a>
179,683 contact crimes against women (‘in which the victims themselves
are the targets of violence’), such as murder, attempted murder, sexual
offences, bodily harm, and ‘common assault’. Of these, 82,728 were cases
of common assault and 54,142 were assault with the intent to cause
grievous bodily harm. In that year, 2,771 women were murdered; there
were 3,445 attempted murders (though the police do not provide data on
motives for these murders); and there were 36,597 recorded cases of
sexual offences against women. This is a broad crime category that
includes rape, attempted rape, sexual assault, and contact sexual
offences.</p>
<p>During the first week that South Africa went into lockdown, between
27 and 31 March 2020, the police recorded 2,300 calls about gender-based
violence. In a webinar on 20 April 2020, Sonke Gender Justice, a South
African-based NGO that supports women, <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-04-21-women-and-children-need-more-protection-during-lockdown/">reported</a>
that these figures do not reveal the full extent of violence against
women and children, as most women who are abused cannot go out and file
reports in the current situation.</p>
<p>In fact, we have seen a surge in cases of violence against women
across the world since the beginning of the pandemic. This is why the
Argentinian slogan <em>el femicidio no se toma cuarentena</em>
(‘femicide does not respect the quarantine’) clearly points out how an
already grave reality is becoming worse. As one solution to this
reality, in <a href="https://forumseguranca.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/violencia-domestica-covid-19-v3.pdf">France</a>
— which experienced a 32 per cent spike in cases of domestic violence
in the first few days of the lockdown — the government started to put
victims of domestic violence in hotel rooms and announced the
establishment of counselling centres to support women who are
experiencing domestic abuse.</p>
<p>Women’s movements have been creating new ways to fight these
realities. In Argentina, on 30 March, the second week of quarantine, the
local feminist movement organised a <em>ruidazo federal</em> (‘federal
noise action’) against patriarchal violence after a double femicide took
place. Faced with the restriction of movement, community and
neighbourhood networks have taken on a significant role in creating
support systems. As a result, governments have been forced to
acknowledge and continue services and networks dedicated to protecting
women, which are essential for caring for and maintaining human life.
During the first phase of the quarantine, Latin American countries such
as Brazil and Argentina pushed policies to tackle the effects of the
lockdown on gender-based violence. The first measures were focused on
developing and improving apps and hotlines to support victims of
gender-based violence. During the first month and a half of the
quarantine in Argentina, the demand for gender-based violence hotlines <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6eCNfo_RLM">increased</a>
throughout various jurisdictions by 40 per cent on average as compared
with the month prior to the declaration of quarantine. As the quarantine
has been extended, public resources have been strengthened with new
strategies of accompaniment, hotlines, and coordination between the
jurisdictions of Nación, the Province of Buenos Aires, and the capital
city, Buenos Aires. During the second phase of the quarantine, the
feminist support to women in situations of violence was declared
essential work in Argentina, allowing support groups to continue their
work to help victims.</p>
<p>In Brazil, initiatives by social movements and organisations have gained traction, such as the <em>Mapa do Acolhimento</em>
or ‘shelter map’, a service that helps women who need psychological or
legal counselling to connect with volunteer psychologists and lawyers
who provide online or in-person services. The World March of Women has
held conversations and solidarity actions across the country, publishing
a list of concrete demands for the state and society to tackle the
pandemic and women’s issues (which contributed to the People’s Feminist
Demands at the end of this paper).</p>
<p>However, it is worth noting that women’s and feminist organisations
have been denouncing not only the increase in cases of patriarchal
violence during quarantine, but also the increasing brutality of
instances of abuse. As Rita Segato <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/15-2020-coronavirus-femicide/">points out</a>,
this happens as neofascist conceptions about female subordination
overshadow more enlightened ideas about women. These views have been
spreading on a large scale under Brazil’s Bolsonaro, India’s Modi, and
so many other countries with conservative right-wing administrations.</p>
<p>Inspired by a neofascist ideology, the rhetoric adopted by heads of
government who vocally promote hatred and encourage misogynistic
attitudes inevitably legitimises perpetrators of violence against women.
Violence is then seen as an ordinary or normal act that authorities
will not prevent or fight; quite the opposite — it is actually
encouraged. This contributes significantly to increasing incidences of
violence: fighting and eliminating people is the rule of barbarism,
which is supported by hate speech, the failure to hold perpetrators
accountable for their actions, and the failure to criminalise these
attitudes.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_30840" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/5-Krutikka_Untitled.jpg" alt="Kruttika Susarla (India), Untitled, first published by Smashboard for the Sexual Violence vs. Capital Punishment series, 2020" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="443" height="443"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-30840" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span><a href="http://www.kruttika.com/">Kruttika Susarla</a> (India), <i>Untitled</i>, first published by Smashboard for the Sexual Violence vs. Capital Punishment series, 2020</span></p></div>
<p>The deepening of hate speech and sexist ideology is accompanied by an
increase in homophobic and transphobic rhetoric, which has notable <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/LGBT/LGBTIpeople_ES.pdf">repercussions</a> on the violation of the LGBTQIA+ population’s rights. During the pandemic, the transgender community has been <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/LGBT/LGBTIpeople_ES.pdf">subjected</a>
to discrimination, harassment, abuse, and persecution by the police and
security forces. In many countries, policies pushed forward by
political authorities have been characterised by the absence of a lack
of inclusiveness towards the transgender community, reinforcing a sexist
binary.</p>
<p>In many countries, restrictions on mobility were implemented based on
biological sex, alternating days when men and women were able to leave
their homes, a policy that excludes non-binary and transgender people.
The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-52716776">implementation</a>
of these policies has often been left up to the discretion of security
forces to decide if a transgender woman is allowed to go out with other
women, or with men — according to the sex by birth — or stuck in the
middle and forbidden from leaving at all. In the midst of this
uncertainty, police and other security forces have often perpetrated
violence against transgender and non-binary people, and store vendors
have denied them service — either because of flagrant transphobia, or
because of a fear of being fined or punished by authorities for not
abiding by state orders.</p>
<p>In some cases, the pandemic has been used to increase harassment and
attacks of LGBTQIA+ organisations and activists, at times forcing
transgender people to hide or deny their identity. As a result of this
reality, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a <a href="https://www.oas.org/es/cidh/prensa/comunicados/2020/081.asp">call</a>
in April for the states of the Americas to guarantee the rights,
equality, and non-discrimination of LGBTQIA+ people in measures issued
to contain the pandemic.</p>
<p>The social consequences of political attitudes cannot be disregarded
or separated from the increasing rates of patriarchal violence during
quarantine in several countries around the world. Amid this scenario,
whether in Brazil, India, or elsewhere, life becomes impossible. It is
not simply about a pandemic that exacerbates historical and social
problems, but about a society that is deteriorating to the point of
triggering its own inefficiency and decline. It is time to get rid of
hierarchies and miseries inherited from the past and build possible —
and necessary — utopias for the future.</p>
<h2><span><strong>IV. The People’s Feminist Demands</strong></span></h2>
<p>CoronaShock is exposing the structural crisis of capitalism,
demonstrating the urgent need to overcome longstanding problems that
have become even more dire in recent times, such as the social,
economic, political, and ideological crises that predate the pandemic.</p>
<p>While the global bourgeoisie is unable to solve basic problems such
as unemployment, hunger, patriarchal violence, and the
underappreciation, precarity, and invisibility of social reproduction
work, the movements of the working class offer their own solutions.
Women in political organisations and social movements around the world
have been organising to present their demands and proposals to overcome
all of these crises in the midst of the global health crisis. With
organised working-class women and women of colour spearheading this
change, we know not just that another world is possible, but that a
socialist, feminist, anti-racist world in which the wellbeing of
humankind and of our planet is placed before the endless accumulation of
profit is not only possible, but necessary. Below, we will introduce a
list of urgent demands from feminist organisations from Brazil to India
to South Africa who are fighting to create such a world.</p>
<ol start="1"><li>Ensure that the measures being demanded by movements in the face of
CoronaShock are made available to all people, with special attention to
those who are the most systematically excluded from such aid: women,
informal workers, migrants, people of colour, lower castes, and LGBTQIA+
people. These general <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/declaration-covid19/">demands</a>, which have been outlined in earlier <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/dossier-29-healthcare/">texts</a> at more length, include:</li><li>
<ol><li>Cancel the payment of utility bills such as electricity, water,
internet bills, and rent as long as the pandemic lasts; guarantee that
debt will not accrue for non-payment.</li><li>Distribute personal hygiene supplies (including masks and hand sanitiser) on a massive level.</li><li>Freeze prices for essential cleaning supplies, hygiene products and
healthy food products, such as grains, vegetables, and meat, according
to each country’s cultural specificities.</li><li>Ensure the right to paid leave to all working people; guarantee no loss of income or rights.</li><li>Provide economic assistance — of <em>at least</em> a minimum wage — for informal workers and self-employed workers.</li><li> Place private healthcare facilities and structures to fight
COVID-19 under public control; expand the capacity of the healthcare
system to serve the people.</li><li>Take emergency action to solve the water supply crisis in each region and guarantee public access.</li></ol>
</li></ol>
<ol start="2"><li>Ensure full transparency of information and data about the evolution
of the pandemic and about every country’s government measures (broken
down by sex, age, income, sexual orientation, gender identity, and
place/territory, whenever possible).</li><li>Include women from working-class women’s movements in leadership
positions for decision-making processes regarding responses to and
recovery from the crises that we face today.</li><li>Demand that governments launch campaigns to encourage men and women
to share household chores equally so that women do not have to shoulder
the brunt of the burden of housework.</li><li>Increase long-term public investment for the public good in areas
such as social protection, pensions, universal public healthcare, free
public childcare, and other actions that affect women directly.</li><li>Aid and financial stimulus packages implemented by governments must
include social protection measures that address women’s special
circumstances and acknowledge the care economy.</li><li>Provide a guaranteed minimum income for women and households that
carry out the many different types of essential care work (including
domestic/housework), especially for those who have dependents.</li><li>Provide food baskets for families with children where childcare centres/schools are closed.</li><li>Demand essential health interventions to protect the health of all
people, with special attention towards marginalised, poor, and
transgender people, migrants, people of colour, the elderly, and people
with disabilities. Such services include mental health services,
HIV/AIDS medications, cancer treatment, etc.</li><li>Ensure that marginalised communities — including those without
access to official documentation, in particular the poor and
working-class transgender people and migrants — receive aid services;
ensure the expedient delivery of emergency relief such as a Universal
Basic Income, food distribution, and other services demanded in this
list.</li><li>Demand that the government protect LGBTQIA+ and all marginalised
people from discrimination in the midst of policies aimed at fighting
COVID-19, such as policies that only allow for men or women to leave
their home on certain days.</li><li>Decriminalise sex work, provide relief and food aid, provide
emergency housing to unhoused transgender and queer people, and support
non-national and undocumented migrant communities in their efforts to
access essential services for their survival.</li><li>Guarantee readily available hotlines and other publicly accessible
communication channels and services for all victims of patriarchal
violence as essential services.</li><li>Demand that governments take on the responsibility for advertising
these hotline numbers and publicly accessible communication channels
through automated services, text messages, banners on buses, billboards,
and displays in public spaces, newspaper ads, etc., so that those in
need know about the service.</li><li>Demand that governments offer counselling facilities for women,
marginalised people, the poor, LGBTQIA+ people, migrants, people of
colour, the elderly, and people with disabilities in vulnerable
situations and/or victims of violence.</li><li>Demand that governments offer safe, comfortable alternative shelter
during the pandemic, such as hotel rooms and vacant buildings, to women
struggling with domestic violence and provide necessary protection and
security in these locations; ensure the continuation of these services
in the long-term to meet the pre-existing need for such services.</li><li>Build networks of solidarity and collective support that respect
physical distancing practices to fight against individualism and
violence; create women’s rights groups and local information campaigns
about emergency plans for women and children suffering from domestic
violence; and create teams to care for children in neighbourhoods with
greater social vulnerability.</li><li>Mobilise healthcare workers to help the community, support women
workers in popular economies, and make sure that they are given proper
pay and protective equipment.</li></ol>
<hr>
<p><a name="_ftn1">[1]</a> Translator’s note: The <em>Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres</em> (‘National Women’s Gathering’) has met annually since 1986.</p>
<p><a name="_ftn2">[2]</a> Translator’s note: In 1977, <em>madres</em> (mothers) and <em>abuelas</em>
(grandmothers) of those disappeared by the civic-military dictatorship
began protesting in the Plaza de Mayo (Buenos Aires). From 1976-1983,
the dictatorship disappeared 30,000 people, many of whom had been
targeted for political activity, or simply for being poor. The <em>madres</em> and <em>abuelas</em>
continue their protests today, demanding — among other things — to know
the whereabouts of their disappeared love ones, many of whom remain
missing.</p>
<p><a name="_ftn3">[3]</a> Translator’s note: The <em>Cambiemos</em>
Party — led by former President Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) — pushed
forward a number of neoliberal reforms such as funding cuts to the
Ministry of Health and Work and attacks on workers’ rights; deepened the
economic crisis in the country; and took on unprecedented <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/dossier-10-argentina-goes-back-to-the-imf/">loans</a> from the International Monetary Fund.</p>
<p><a name="_ftn4">[4]</a> Translator’s note: <em>Patria Grande</em> refers both to the idea of a ‘Great Homeland’ and to a political front, <em>Frente Patria Grande</em>, a broad coalition of grassroots organisations and people’s movements in Argentina.</p>
<p><a name="_ftn5">[5]</a>
The term ‘popular economy’ refers to strategies of economic subsistence
that poor workers who are excluded from the formal labour market
develop to guarantee the reproduction of their lives, such as working as
street vendors, collecting recycling and trash, urban farming, etc.</p>
<p><a name="_ftn6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> It is important to distinguish <em>patriarchal violence</em>
from other terms such as domestic violence, which too often
inadvertently ignores power and male dominance inherent in such
violence, as well as the fact that violence against women is not only
exerted in the household. In <em>Feminism is for Everybody, </em>bell hooks <a href="http://madkenyanwoman.blogspot.com/2013/09/patriarchal-violence-101.html">writes</a>
that ‘[f]or too long the term domestic violence has been used as a
“soft” term which suggests it emerges in an intimate context that is
private and somehow less threatening, less brutal, than the violence
that takes place outside the home’. Rather, patriarchal violence is a
more expanded definition that is linked to the inherent inequality of
the capitalist system, and which manifests in many forms, including
domestic and physical gender-based violence, but also symbolic and
cultural violence. Patriarchal violence ‘continually reminds the
listener that violence in the home is connected to sexism and sexist
thinking, to male domination’, bell hooks writes.</p>
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