How is COVID-19 impacting gender dynamics and creating newer vulnerabilities for women?
While COVID-19 is a highly contagious and a potentially deadly virus, the lived experiences of the pandemic reveal its many socio-economic implications. A rigid lockdown was implemented almost overnight, disrupting lives and livelihoods across the country and bringing high degrees of uncertainty. The sudden curtailment of mobility and the heightened economic stress brought with it a strong sense of loss of control over people’s lives and began to impact household and couple dynamics, creating newer vulnerabilities for women and children.
This thinking has emerged from an on-going research on the social-environmental and health implication of COVID-19, as a part of a larger effort to develop a new lens of social vulnerability to inform healthcare services. For this HCD-led study, we adapted our research methods and tools to remotely engage with families over a course of two months to understand their daily experiences, shifts in decision-making patterns and behaviours as they cope during the pandemic.
In attempts to cope with the strong sense of loss of control pervasive in different aspects of life, families are compelled to shift roles and responsibilities within the unit and develop workarounds to deal with the induced economic and sustenance stress. Consequently, this has altered the long-established traditional gender roles and home dynamics.
Traditionally, men and women have clearly defined roles with the man as the provider and the primary decision-maker, and the woman as the caregiver. Most individuals interiorise such norms early in life and exhibit strong adherence in adulthood. For instance, high internalisation of norms for adolescent girls reflects in practices such as self-imposed restrictions on their mobility and education, thereby restricting her sources of information and peer-support, and becoming increasingly dependent on her family.
The COVID-19 pandemic induced loss of employment and mobility restrictions are shifting these traditional gender roles, almost to the point of discomfort, by pushing men and women into roles that do not align with their internalised gender norms. Men who have lost their jobs and businesses during this time are unable to fulfil the role of ‘provider’. Moreover, mobility restrictions and shelter-in-place norms require them to stay at home, a behaviour that is contradictory to their established gender role. Similarly, severe economic stress has pushed many women to partake in income generation in addition to their domestic responsibilities, substantially increasing their work burden and time poverty. Such shifts in gender roles are aggravating the mental and physical stress for both genders, with many people feeling unprepared and overwhelmed as they try to cope with the changing roles and responsibilities.
In our conversation with several couples across Delhi, UP and Bihar, we observed an emergent amplification of varying gender dynamics due to the discomfort of being pushed into atypical gender roles. Couples that abided by rigid gender roles appear to have reinforced rigidity by way of further gatekeeping and reducing women’s mobility and access to information. On the other end, those exhibiting flexible dynamics before COVID, seem to have increased their collaboration and communication.
To illustrate, let’s take a look at Arti’s and Seema’s family. Arti and Aakash are a traditional couple living in a joint family with their three kids. Arti has a functional relationship with her husband with low emotional support and firmly adheres to established gender norms. During the pandemic, Akash’s constant presence at home has restricted Arti’s movement outside the house, and negatively impacted her other relationships and support networks. Loss of interaction with her peers has made Arti more dependent on her husband for information and support. Further, the stress of unemployment has strained Akash’s relationships with his wife and children as his anxiety often translates into aggressive behaviours such as habitual yelling and verbal abuses.
On the other hand, Seema lived with her husband Sandeep, and kids in an informal urban settlement, where she runs a make-shift provision store while her husband is the primary breadwinner. Due to the sudden lockdown, Sandeep was confined to another city and unable to return home. In his absence, Seema found herself taking on the provider role. Though overwhelmed, she promptly adapted to her new responsibilities while simultaneously managing her domestic chores and childcare. When Sandeep returned, he partly took over the household duties as Seema focused on running the shop. The couple managed to power through severe economic stress by showing flexibility with traditional gender roles and collaborative dynamics. Now, with the complete support of her husband, Seema more actively participates in financial planning and decision-making around the house. Though they are exhibiting more gender-equitable dynamics, the evident discomfort that Seema has articulated on taking these new responsibilities can lead to her revert to traditional roles once the economic stress becomes manageable.
There are indications that this accentuated flexibility is temporary and likely to reverse once things go back to ‘normal’. In view of this, there is an emerging need to maintain and nurture such collaborative dynamics to be able to foster long-term gender-equitable relationships.
Besides, many women like Arti are facing strained home dynamics that may aggravate into substance or domestic abuse in light of the continued economic stress and future uncertainty. They may benefit from external outlets where they can seek support, express any distress around mental or physical health, and receive necessary advisory and mobilisation support. One way to do so, is by cultivating women-led peer relationships within their communities, in a manner that doesn’t disrupt the household dynamics.
With the way of life disrupted for everyone, men and women are being impacted by this global pandemic differently. Such concurrent learning efforts focused on studying the impact of covid on gender norms, role allocations, household dynamics, women’s say in decision-making, their re-defined mobility and access to community resources, health and financial services — becomes of immense value for us to understand the various trends and counter trends emerging due to the pandemic. These efforts allow us to better observe, model and predict future scenarios that are rooted in the context, and help develop future forward strategic recommendations and interventions. These can enable further strengthening of many of the ongoing efforts and rapidly adapt them to the changes coming in due to covid.
Vihara is now putting in efforts to build a partner platform that convenes diverse stakeholders from the ecosystem to come together to develop these future forward strategic recommendations but also develop strategies to prevent any negative scenarios which may have potential long-term implications or undo the efforts around gender-equitability undertaken in the last decade. As we continue to keep one ear to the ground in the next half of 2020, we are beginning to reach out to our partners and other potential partners for this effort. Reach out to us if you may be interested to be a part of this endeavour.
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About the Project
Vihara has spearheaded the efforts around developing models to understand vulnerability with respect to health. Through our work in child health Vihara uncovered the key social and environmental factors that perpetuate vulnerability and define a family’s ability to provide care, their coping and care-seeking behaviours. A lens of Social Vulnerability enables a deeper understanding of the family’s risk and enabling factors and allows for more targeted intervention strategies to enable families to achieve health within their own means. This shift of the health ecosystem’s focus from mothers to families has been a pivotal one.
The lens of social vulnerability is now being extended to women and child health in India and Kenya as Project Pathways. This effort is being undertaken in a multidisciplinary consortium with Vihara Innovation Network, Sonders Collective, FinalMile, and DesireLine funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The COVID-19 research study has been commissioned as a part of Project Pathways. The geographies selected for in India give a glimpse of the diverse population and landscape of India. The study has been undertaken in 5 demographically varied districts in 3 states in India, namely Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Between them, we covered rural, tribal and low-income urban areas with varying social, cultural and economic background.
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Vihara Innovation Network uses behavioral science, program design and new approaches to learning to ensure effective outcomes in public health, climate change and entrepreneurship development. We work with organisations & people who are invested in change, who bring their own deep expertise & curiosity about the world and who collaborate quickly and easily to bring meaningful things to life. We are just an e-mail away at info@vihara.asia.
