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Life has been strange, but systematically, suspended by the pandemic. It is systematic because the pandemic has frozen us not only in our homes, but also in the largest typefaces of our caste, class and gender. The virus has discarded any illusions or claims that these identities may not determine our lives. Our very survival is an undeniable bet of our kind, while the days we spend in our homes are a cover-up for our worst gender tropes.
Governments around the world have implored people to stay at home without even acknowledging the increased domestic responsibilities created by the closure. The home now includes children forced to stay home all day, the elderly especially vulnerable to the virus, and babies who can no longer be cared for by willing neighbors. This is possible because this burden has been traditionally borne and continues to be borne disproportionately by women in the home.
The difference is even more biased for Indian women, who do more unpaid care and housework than women in any other country except Kazakhstan. Indian women spend up to 353 minutes a day on housework, which is 577% more than the 52 minutes men spend on it. Factors such as double shifts for working women, the absence of domestic help and the growing need for cooking, cleaning, caring and hygiene are increasing and tipping our current balance of domestic work.
The Malaysian government led a campaign for “happiness at home” (# WomenpreventCOVID19) asking women to put on makeup at home, adopt a childish tone similar to Doraemon’s, and laugh shyly when asking husbands to help with housework. The posters were later removed after the protests. However, the evil sentiment behind such cartels is also widely present in India, and is thriving uncontrollably in the current pandemic. Daily WhatsApp senders, for example, demonstrate the problems of men who are locked up at home with wives who cannot go to the salon or wear makeup and scold them for participating in household chores.
The Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, which has kept the patriarchal stoic silent on the matter, is complicit in the problems of Indian women, who bear the brunt of the pandemic on their calloused feet and hardened hands. The Odisha government urged the men not to treat the confinement as a holiday and to ask the women to prepare food several times during the day. It is tragic that the only recognition by the government asks men not to carry women more, but it does not contemplate that men share this work. Each public order to stay home could easily include tips for sharing the household burden at home.
A woman walks past the closed stores at the Janpath Market in New Delhi, April 14, 2020. Photo: PTI / Vijay Verma
The gender impact of the pandemic is not limited to the limits of household chores. Domestic violence is the hidden pandemic that has thrived in the conditions that were created to cure the pandemic. The National Commission for Women has seen a double increase in gender violence across the country, and the agency received 257 calls in the last week of March, compared to 116 calls in the first week. The reality of these numbers is several times greater than their value, as 99% of sexual assault cases in India go unreported, and a woman is 17 times more likely to be assaulted by her husband.
These numbers are avoided beyond calculation by blocking, which multiplies the factors that contribute to domestic violence while reducing the outputs of this abuse. Every woman facing domestic abuse has been locked in her home with her abuser, for months together, and the abuser is reeling from the impact of the confinement. Usually, this woman could have sought refuge elsewhere on the nights that she feared abuse, sought medical help after the abuse, or sought help from the police. However, each of these points of sale has been systematically closed by the blockade. Travel is not allowed, a visit to the hospital may not be “essential” and a call to the police is not welcome.
If domestic violence was a virus in itself, the blockade has not only increased its reproduction rate, but has also transformed its DNA to make it a more tenacious variant. Other contributing factors include the abuser’s ability to exercise constant vigilance by monitoring phones, reducing the functioning of the courts, the inability and fear of traveling to counseling centers, the risk of contracting the virus in these centers and increased financial dependency on women who are more likely to experience cut wages and job losses during the pandemic. Additionally, increased household alcohol consumption or forced alcohol withdrawal due to the closure of local wine stores may exacerbate the complicated relationship between alcohol and domestic violence.
The growing apprehension of child abuse with the Childline India Helpline, which received 92,000 SOS calls in just 11 days after the shutdown, and the inaccessibility of contraceptives and abortion services further complicates domestic abuse. This is especially true in light of the fact that the country’s leading hospitals have suspended elective surgeries and are only performing essential or life-saving operations. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has issued guidelines for states where abortion was classified as an essential service, but the government needs to order the same.
Gender disparity and violence are an ingrained part of our daily lives and cannot be eliminated during the pandemic. But this cannot be the reason for us to put it aside while we “fix” the pandemic. Blocking is essential and necessary. But you don’t need to be gender neutral. It does not have to further worsen our uneven balance of domestic work and domestic violence.
Spain and Portugal stated that protection and assistance to victims of gender violence are essential services that operate during the closure. France funded 20,000 hotel reservations for women seeking refuge from domestic abuse, and established toll booths in supermarkets and pharmacies so that women can contact people away from their abuser. Argentina, France, Italy, Norway and Spain adopted Mask-19, in which a woman who asks this pharmacist for this type of mask is a pseudonym for him to request help. The police force could be sensitized to reports of domestic abuse. Here are some steps the government can take, in addition to increasing investment in organizations that help women. You just need to remember that the women of India are not waiting on the road to pick up at the end of the running of the bulls, but are suffering the worst and are being exploited while they are doing it.
Harshitha Kasarla is a law graduate of NALSAR Law University, Hyderabad, and is currently litigating in Delhi.
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