Women, Work and COVID-19: Enterprises, SHGs and Workers

There existed many on ground realities during the first phase of the pandemic, which showed signs of an overstressed health system, precarity of livelihoods of women workers and women-led enterprises, and the important role that women self-help groups working in rural areas played to help contain the spread of COVID-19. As India grapples with the second wave of COVID-19, we look back at some of the lessons learnt early on. This series of articles focuses on both the economic and the infrastructural support that women-led organisations have provided and the manner in which they were affected during the COVID-19 pandemic. The articles focus upon the working conditions of front-line women workers, especially accredited social health activists, anganwadi workers and their supervisors (Integrated Child Development Services supervisors, auxiliary nurse/midwife and ASHA facilitators) and the self-help groups and their work within their respective communities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, the detailed surveys of women entrepreneurs were conducted in the states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and women informal workers in  West Bengal and Jharkhand to access the economic shocks that women in the informal sector faced due to an unprecedented lockdown, at an individual, household and enterprise level. The articles also found the dismal utilisation of any schemes launched by the government to provide relief during the pandemic. Thus, with the pandemic at its worst, efficient relief measures that are targeted more effectively and awareness of ground realities are the need of the hour.

This series has been published in collaboration with IWWAGE, a research initiative of LEAD at Krea University.