BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

In a time of COVID-19, the psy­cho-so­cial well-be­ing of a fe­male es­sen­tial work­er is cause for con­cern and care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to cre­at­ing prac­ti­cal sup­port mech­a­nisms that would aid in its preser­va­tion.

This ac­cord­ing to a gen­der ex­pert and ac­tivist who im­plied with the many ad­just­ments caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, women were now on dou­ble and triple du­ty.

In an email in­ter­view with UWI, St Au­gus­tine, Cam­pus, lec­tur­er, and grad­u­ate stud­ies co­or­di­na­tor at the In­sti­tute for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies (IGDS), An­gelique Nixon, she said ac­knowl­edg­ment must be made of the work by those on the front­lines, not on­ly health­care and emer­gency work­ers but al­so work­ers at gro­ceries, mar­kets, phar­ma­cies, hard­ware, and small shops that sell es­sen­tial goods and ser­vices. As well as work­ers who are stock­ing shelves, clean­ing, help­ing cus­tomers, serv­ing, cash­ing, and de­liv­er­ing.

Nixon said many of these work­ers are women and they can­not work from home.

“Women on the front­lines are al­so tak­ing care of their house­holds and fam­i­lies. Care work is still, for the most part, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of women. This means that women are on dou­ble and triple du­ty from their work­places to their homes and com­mu­ni­ties,” Nixon re­lat­ed.

She said much of this labour is in­vis­i­ble and or ex­pect­ed, but this did not make it any less bur­den­some.

“We must make sure that women work­ers have the psy­cho-so­cial sup­port and so­cial ser­vices they need to get through these in­cred­i­bly dif­fi­cult times,” Nixon ad­vised.

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke with the head of IGDS, Dr Gabrielle Ho­sein who said in T&T about one-third of house­holds were fe­male-head­ed which places women in the cat­e­gories of main bread­win­ners and car­ers.

She not­ed this might al­so be the case in house­holds with both par­ents, where both may still be work­ing, yet where women who may be earn­ing more may still be car­ry­ing the un­equal bur­den of care for chil­dren, the sick, and the el­der­ly.

“We al­so have to keep in mind the con­tin­u­ing chal­lenges that thou­sands of fa­thers may have in pro­vid­ing child sup­port for chil­dren, liv­ing with their moth­er, such that the bur­den for the sur­vival of chil­dren is falling on women more than ever be­fore,” Ho­sein point­ed out.

She said those women who are es­sen­tial work­ers may not have safe op­tions for their chil­dren, and high­light­ed rates of child sex­u­al abuse tra­di­tion­al­ly rise dur­ing the school va­ca­tion pe­ri­od be­cause of such poor op­tions for many par­ents. She said such work­ers may be wor­ried about their risk to chil­dren, de­pen­dents, and el­der­ly fam­i­ly, and they may in­creas­ing­ly be the main providers for a larg­er net­work of fam­i­ly, and pos­si­bly wor­ried about sim­ply mak­ing ends meet.

“Es­sen­tial work­ers should not just be ap­plaud­ed, their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties need to be un­der­stood and their needs sup­port­ed. As we ap­pre­ci­ate them dur­ing this pe­ri­od, we should keep in mind that women such as nurs­es are work­ing on a 2013 agree­ment of wages, and sup­port­ing them in their ne­go­ti­a­tions over a fu­ture wage agree­ment is cer­tain­ly one way that we can help ad­dress their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties,” Ho­sein ad­vo­cat­ed.