78pc women-headed households financially struggling: report
About 78 percent of women-headed households have been facing economic hardship in the pandemic, due to job losses, increased household responsibilities, and interrupted support services at work for child care, found a recent study.
Meanwhile, women of urban areas spending time for cooking, cleaning, and washing has gone up by about 128 percent, even though it remains almost the same in rural areas.
The study titled "Rapid Analysis of Care Work during Covid Pandemic in Bangladesh" also found that although almost 72 percent of home-makers used to spend around five hours per day doing unpaid care work before the pandemic, 38 percent among them said hours for doing such work has gone up.
In addition, 85 percent of the employed women have to spend more than four hours for unpaid care work in the pandemic.
Besides, 30 percent of female respondents who used to spend two hours for children's education before the pandemic are currently spending more time accompanying children in online classes.
Sharmind Neelormi, associate professor of economics at Jahangirnagar University, shared the findings of her study yesterday at a webinar organised by Formal Recognition of Women's Unaccounted Work Forum, which consists of five member organisations—Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF), ActionAid Bangladesh, Bangladesh Nari Pragati Sangha (BNPS), Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) and Oxfam.
The study also covered job loss in rural and urban households, increased poverty rate, women's income reduction, and the proportion of unpaid care work of men and women.
The study was conducted from November 2020 to January 2021 in nine rural and urban districts of the country. The interviewees comprised 87 percent women and 13 percent men, mostly aged between 31 and 45.
Of the respondents, 47 percent were home-makers, while others were from a wide range of occupations.
According to Neelormi, women's diminishing assets can have hidden gender costs, because it is women who lose their property during financial crises, be it their jewellery or domestic animals raised by them.
MJF Executive Director Shaheen Anam, in her speech at the event, said if people can think of women's work as work, without considering it as just a responsibility, only then will it add value in women's work.
ActionAid Bangladesh Country Director Farah Kabir, who is also a member of the forum, joined the webinar and recommended that "to recognise and redistribute unpaid care work, support women in such work by establishing the infrastructure and system that cater to them, create support mechanism at the local level, support initiatives for women in the informal sectors, and provide vaccination on a priority basis to women and girls".
She also suggested recognising women's contribution to the protection of natural resources, designing special training packages for women to deal with present demands on unpaid care work, and having support for women who are full-time employed and also involved in unpaid care work.
Speaking as chief guest, lawmaker Saber Hossain Chowdhury, also a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Planning, said, "We need to find out how we can incorporate informal work in the national database. We want to add women's unpaid labour to the System of National Accounts of the coming fiscal year. There is also a need of finding out the monetary value of women's work in the protection of natural resources."
Rokeya Kabir, executive director of BNPS; Sarah Hall, manager of women's empowerment and care programme of Oxfam Great Britain; Dr Fahmida Khatun, executive director of CPD; Shoko Ishikawa, country representative of UN Women Bangladesh; Phedra Moon Morris, head of Aid at Canadian High Commission; Mahedi Masuduzzaman, deputy secretary of Finance Division; among others, spoke at the event.
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