Crisis After Crisis: The Pandemic and Women’s Work

2021 ◽  
pp. 001946622110132
Author(s):  
N. Neetha
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
Women's Employment ◽  
Women’S Employment ◽  
Jel Codes ◽  
Adverse Conditions ◽  
Women’S Work ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Conditions Of Work

The pandemic has resulted in severe dislocations in the lives of many women workers especially the poor and the neglected, exacerbating the ‘chronic crisis’ in the everyday existence of the workers to unprecedented proportions. Evidences from the ground signal desperate times with women workers facing severe unemployment, reduced incomes and adverse conditions of work. The article argues that the crisis of women’s work caused by COVID-19 is not a sudden tragic consequence of the pandemic, but an outcome of pre-existing structural and systemic ruptures. For long, women have confronted, exclusion and precarious employment opportunities resulting from anti-women attitude at workplaces with lack of acknowledgement and attempts to address the deep-rooted structural fault lines leading to systemic failures. After giving the larger background that are important in the understanding of women’s employment in the context of the pandemic, the article gives an overview of women’s employment during the pandemic taking up two specific sectors that are particularly marked—paid domestic work and frontline community workers (ASHA and Anganwadi workers) are examined in detail. The article suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated and personalised the endemic context of crisis for women calling for state intervention at the time to correct systemic issues that have positioned women unequally in employment. JEL Codes: A14, B54, F66, J01, J21

scholarly journals THE LEGAL PURPOSES OF WOMEN’S EMPLOYMENT

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 1658-1666
Author(s):  
Mohammed Muqbil Nasser Al-Muqbil
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Women's Employment ◽  
Women’S Employment ◽  
Social Challenges ◽  
Women’S Work

The current era’s developments require the expansion of research into the goals and purposes of Sharia when tackling social challenges in the Muslim world; especially in the issues currently under discussion and controversy, which is women’s work. In the research that we have here, a presentation that accompanies these developments and that deals with the desired purposes of women’s work comprehensively, showing the concept of women’s work through the goals of the Sharia, illustrating the deep connection between the concept of the work in question and preserving the five essential goals of the Sharia: Preserving religion, facilitating education, protecting human life, preserving one’s honor and one’s wealth. The author then went on to observe these goals in the matter of women’s work, in terms of preventing harm, achieving justice, balancing benefits and harm to society, and discussing the outcomes of women’s work, such as the doing of good, contributing to society, maintaining good societal manners, and obtaining the best education for one’s dependents. Then he concluded with the writing’s most prominent results and recommendations.

Troubling Trade-offs Between Women’s Work and Intimate Partner Violence: Evidence From 19 Developing Countries

2021 ◽  
pp. 088626052110219
Author(s):  
Sameen Zafar ◽  
MS Saima Zia ◽  
Rafi Amir-ud-Din
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Intimate Partner Violence ◽  
Partner Violence ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
Intimate Partner ◽  
Demographic And Health Surveys ◽  
Women's Employment ◽  
Women’S Employment ◽  
Women’S Work

The empirical link between women’s employment status and their experience of different types of intimate partner violence (IPV) is not very apparent. Using Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data from 19 developing countries in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East, we found that working women were significantly more likely to experience IPV than their stay-at-home counterparts. Given the great diversity in women’s employment with respect to economic returns and working conditions, we disaggregated women’s employment into three categories vis-à-vis agriculture jobs (AJ), blue-collar jobs (BJ), and white-collar jobs (WJ). The disaggregated analysis revealed that women engaged in all three job categories were significantly more likely to experience IPV. After controlling for potential endogeneity of women’s employment, we found that women’s work increased the risk of less severe physical violence (LSPV) and emotional violence (EV) but reduced the risk of sexual violence (SV). Endogeneity-adjusted disaggregated analysis showed that women engaged in BJ and WJ faced an increased risk of LSPV but reduced risk of SV. In contrast, women undertaking AJ faced a smaller risk of severe physical violence (SPV) and SV. This study contradicts some long-held beliefs that women’s work is a sufficient condition for protecting them from IPV. The public policy should not assume that women’s earnings automatically protect them against the risk of IPV. While encouraging a greater female labor force participation rate is important in its own right, women’s risk of IPV is context-specific.

Empowered or Entangled: Agency and Choice in Women’s Employment in India

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-116
Author(s):  
Neetha N.
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Women's Employment ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Women’S Employment ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
Division Of Housework ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
Self Help Groups

In India, formation of NGO-aided self-help groups (SHGs) for production was seen as an important step to lift women out of economic marginalisation and, thus, for women’s empowerment. With changes in economic policies, challenges of wage employment for women were also assumed to have been addressed. In this context, this article, drawing from the history of empowerment discourse and its obsession with the economic aspect, examines women’s employment and its multiple dimensions The analysis provides insights into the gender-based inequalities in the labour market which are evident in the concentration of women workers in precariat, feminised jobs either under the control of the family or without any recognition or legal protection. The prevalence of regressive gendered ideologies in employment and in the division of housework raises critical questions about the understanding of the two critical pillars of empowerment, namely, choice and agency.

Textile Production and Gender in the Sokoto Caliphate

1993 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen Kriger
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
Textile Production ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Textile Manufacturing ◽  
Women’S Work ◽  
The North ◽  
Sokoto Caliphate ◽  
Textile Products

Men and women, trained in the occupations of spinner, weaver, dyer, tailor and embroiderer, manufactured the renowned textile products of the Sokoto Caliphate, a nineteenth-century state in the central Sudan region of West Africa. The numerical distributions of men and women within these occupations were uneven, but not in accordance with the pattern described most frequently in the literature. Offered here is another, more detailed view of textile production. Women were not simply spinners but were also weavers and dyers. Uneven, too, were the geographical distributions of men and women workers. Men skilled in textile manufacturing were widely disseminated throughout the caliphate, as were women spinners; women skilled at weaving and dyeing, however, were concentrated mainly in the southern emirates of Nupe and Ilorin. Similarly, male entrepreneurs organized large-scale textile manufacturing enterprises in the north-central portion of the caliphate while enterprises created by women were located to the south.New sources, the textile products of the caliphate, along with other contemporary evidence, reveal that women's work was more varied, more prominent, more highly skilled and more organized than previously thought. Comparative analyses along gender lines show that men's work and women's work were similar in the degree of training required and the levels of skill achieved. Labor, especially skilled labor, was critical to textile production if the caliphate was to maintain its external markets. But there were substantial differences in the degree to which men and women could mobilize and organize labor. A variety of social and political factors in caliphate society combined to assist men and hinder women in the organization and management of textile manufacturing.

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