Shrageet Patel is a student of Master of Disaster Studies at Special Centre for Disaster Research, JNU, New Delhi.

This article attempts to explore the adversities the domestic workers living in the congested spaces in the mid of the capital of Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow have faced in the COVID crisis. Domestic workers are one of the most unprotected groups in informal employment in unorganized sector who remain outside the ambit of social security and legal protection. Even after their significant contribution to the economy and society, they are mostly invisible, undervalued and have to face the brunt of crisis in first place. Stringent and abrupt curfew like lockdown made their situation miserable since it affected their lives and livelihood. Out of all the groups, the women domestic workers were hardest hit, facing total or near unemployment, job losses and economic distress. Looking through the gender lens, this study focusses on assessing the socioeconomic impact on the domestic women workers and their families in locality of Gomti Nagar Extension, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh during lockdown phases in first and second wave of COVID 19.

According to International Labour Organization (ILO), it has been estimated that globally more than 25 million jobs are at risk due to COVID-19 outbreak. The ILO describes it in its report as ‘the worst global crisis since World War II’. It is estimated that four in five people (81%) of the global workforce of 3.3 billion people are currently affected by the lockdowns in various countries across the world.

Many things have been talked about the impact stories on informal workers in general, a gender lens is necessary. Women who are employed in the informal sector are the most vulnerable categories of the workforce concentrated in low-paying and highly unwarranted sectors. Not only do they face higher risks due to their social disadvantages and poor working conditions but they also have fewer resources at their disposal to address these risks. One such category is that of female domestic workers which has been talked about in this paper.

Currently there are 75.6 million domestic workers aged 15 and above (ILO, 2019), with women continuing to make up the majority of the sector — 76.2 percent. India alone accounts for 4.8 million domestic workers of which 2.8 million are women (PLFS, 2019). Poverty, gender discrimination in the labour market and lack of employment opportunities (Anderson 2000; Blofield 2012) have pushed the rural population to migrate to urban spaces in search for higher income (Parreñas 2000; Lutz 2011; Michel and Peng 2017). This has resulted in a large influx of workers willing to perform domestic work and they have to live meagrely in small, stingy and unhygienic urban spaces to sustain as well as earn for their survival.

Categories of Domestic Workers

The Ministry of Labour and Employment has (2011) has categorised domestic workers as:

• Part-time worker: A domestic help worker who works for one of more employers for a specified number of hours per day or performs specific tasks for each of the multiple employers every day.
• Full-time worker: A domestic help worker who works for a single employer for a specified number of hours and who returns back to his/her home every day after work.
• Live-in worker: A domestic help worker who works full time for a single employer and also stays on the premises of the employer or in a dwelling provided by the employer and who does not return back to his/her home every day after work.

This study has followed an ethnographic method of research to contain both qualitative and quantitative information on various themes including the Female Domestic Workers Profile such as age, education, children and marital status etc; Nature of Employment and role of state machinery for the workers during three time periods including

1. a) During the First Lockdown: March–May 2020
2. b) Second time Lockdown: April -June 2021
3. c) When survey was conducted: December 2021

Personal Sketch

It has been observed that most of the women who are working as household workers are mostly young and below the age of 30. But it has also been seen that their young daughters are also helping their mother in household chores to make a living and earn little more for their family. These girls leave their education in midway and stay at home to take care of their young siblings to save their mother’s time which can be invested in more working hours to earn more wages.

Majority of the women didn’t have access to schools. The lack of education prevents the workers from exploring other occupations that require higher qualifications and they have to indulge in unskilled work for a living.

“We are 8 daughters in the family of 10 and my father is a tailor so to make a living, I have left the school after class 7th and started working as domestic help. But my younger sisters are studying since I can now contribute in running the house”. – by 14 year old Poonam

It was observed that Women workers are not very aware about the contraceptive methods in the market and they don’t own whole rights over their body in determining child bearing. Most women have family of 5 to 7 people.

Support from  government agencies

Women workers felt helpless during the phase of lockdown as government agencies have not come forward in giving any form of relief. But we see an increase in the number of households receiving government aid during the lockdown phase through an additional kind of aid provided during this time period was Rs 500 bank transfer to Jan Dhan or Zero Balance Account holders. It was received by few of the women workers otherwise it came into their husband’s account.

Support From NGOs and Societies

They have received the cooked food, uncooked food, sometimes ration both the times in the first lockdown which lasted for around 3 months. The quality of food vary day wise, sometimes it was delicious other days it was uncooked. Women felt that people gathered around food trucks and there was scrimmage to take as much food packets for their family. Women have to suffer because they cannot tussle and wait in long queue everyday. This service was available during the first lockdown but in second lockdown during second wave of COVID 19, no one came for any form of aid. Neither the societies nor any government agencies came into the scene to reduce their misery. It was about whoever is lucky to grab food packets for their family members.

Nature of employment

Domestic workers have the option to choose to either perform a variety of household tasks (like house cleaning, cooking, and washing utensils among other tasks) or specialise in only one task. In the field survey, it was observed that most respondents preferred to perform multiple tasks. This could be to take advantage of any employment opportunities or to customize their services based on their employer’s requirements. House cleaning and washing utensils emerged as the most popular tasks performed by female domestic workers. Pandemic has affected their number of days working as household workers but not the nature of work.

Employment affected by pandemic during both COVID waves

When asked the women respondents, they felt miserable about their condition during first lockdown during march to may 2020. Almost 21 women were out of work immediately without any financial support and were at the mercy of their savings and people’s help. 2 women respondents reported ‘not working as domestic workers’ before the pandemic but after that they had to work to make their ends meet. They were either working as daily-wage labour or were not employed at all. When these workers were interviewed, 21 workers who were formerly working as domestic workers had lost their jobs during the lockdown. But the findings revealed that 23 workers were part-time workers before the pandemic i.e. they worked for more than one employer for a specified number of hours per day. The strictest lockdown of March–May 2020 led to the decline of part-time workers to 2 because most of them were not called for work by their employers as their societies have strict guidelines for outsiders. Some were facing difficulties in commuting due to closure of public transport and few were replaced by workers who were willing to work as full time worker for the safety purpose.

Then during second lockdown of April – June 2021, the workers have not suffered for longer months as they went to work early. In the current scenario, most of the women went back to work as before the pre pandemic phase but working hours were reduced in comparison to pre pandemic era. Few new women joined as household workers to support their family.

According to the heteropatriarchal gender norms which assign household work to women, female domestic workers have to allocate a large part of their day in taking care of children and doing their own household work. As a result, the unfair division of unpaid labour at the home front has resulted in many female domestic workers being unable to dedicate as much time to work as they would like. This is also one of the reasons.

“Residents have taken our job and even have not helped in times of our needs”. – 19 year old Aarti Das

Conclusion

Looking through the perspective and condition of women household workers, it presents a gloomy picture pf the India’s informal sector. Since the women workers were mostly doing this work to earn a living for their family. While the workers employed in the informal sector in general suffer from various vulnerabilities and unforeseen future, the women working as a domestic worker in particular are often non-recognised and invisible.

The recent pandemic further exacerbated their miseries by impacting their lives and livelihood. The job-losses followed by decline in their incomes altered their expenditure, consumption and even made access to basic right of food almost diminished. Food which is utmost important for living, women have to think each day about their survival and their children. While the income and consumption has increased for some of the workers now, it is yet to reach the level as it used to be in the pre-pandemic phase due to loss in their employment for many months.

While it was observed that insufficient food, loss of employment, in access to ration, difficulty in finding the new jobs, waiting for lockdown to ease, etc were the main issues they faced during this COVID 19 crisis. Though the nearby societies and NGOs have helped on their level to provide cooked food and sometimes packets of ration to these households during the first lockdown phase. Second lockdown have not hurt their livelihood in the same way as previous one because they went to work in few days, hence can continue their living. During the current scenario, people have normalised the COVID 19 and have started calling the women household workers for the work.

These adversities have testified how informal workers especially women and their contribution to the society is almost invisible. They do not find space in the accounting statistics, nor in any policy discussion. Even during the pandemic, which warranted a renewed focus on these workers, they remained excluded and were neglected in the discussions. Growing income insecurity and vulnerability in the informal sector necessitates expanding the scope of social protection by including economic security besides basic security.

Acknowledgement:

I am grateful to my professor Dr Sunita Reddy for encouraging me to do write this article under the course on ‘Gender and Disaster’.

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