[The pandemic is making clearer the historical and social problems
of society, how it is deteriorating to the point of triggering its own
decline. Fighting for another society that cares for women and life is
a necessary task for our future.] [[link removed]]

PATRIARCHY AND THE PANDEMIC: DISENTANGLING THE WEB OF OPPRESSION  
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Renata Porto Bugni
December 30, 2020
People's Dispatch
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_ The pandemic is making clearer the historical and social problems
of society, how it is deteriorating to the point of triggering its own
decline. Fighting for another society that cares for women and life is
a necessary task for our future. _

Nurses take part in joint trade unions’ protest in South Africa
demanding better working conditions, Mlungisi Mbele/New Frame

 

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it agonizingly clear that the systems
under which we are living were already broken. The pandemic has only
exacerbated the crisis of the capitalist system and removed any
illusions about this reality. However, the impact of the crisis has
not been uniform. The neoliberal capitalist model, which survives and
profits by exploiting the vulnerable, again fell back on its same old
ways. As a result, it has been the workers, the migrants, the women,
and others, whose unpaid and underpaid labor serves as the basis for
capitalists to profit, who have suffered the most.

In this conversation with Renata Porto Bugni from the Tricontinental:
Institute for Social Research, we discuss the study done by the
organization with researchers from South Africa, India, Argentina,
Brazil and the US titled Coronashock and Patriarchy
[[link removed]] to
better understand the impact of the pandemic on women and members of
the LGBTQIA+ community. We discuss the conditions of their work, their
homes, the surge in violence against members of these communities,
among other things.

PEOPLES DISPATCH: _The majority of workers on the frontlines of the
fight against COVID-19 such as hospital and community care workers are
women. Despite their vital importance to the fight against COVID-19
they have had to constantly struggle for their basic rights. What,
according to your study, are some of the factors standing in the way
of them getting these rights?_

RENATA PORTO BUGNI: Our study shows that several factors have
contributed to this situation.

The first issue we address is the structural nature of the development
of the capitalist model itself. The implementation of the neoliberal
model has imposed a more complex reality to deal with collective
problems such as a pandemic. As this model promotes tax reductions,
privatization, and outsourcing, states become more and more
debilitated. They cut their budgets, and reduce social investments.
Austerity policies, a minimal state, and the weakening of labor unions
and social organizations have compromised the social and public
resources dedicated to assist the most vulnerable segments of the
society.

As a result of this process of exploitation and privatization in
capitalist society, a social and sexual division of labor is
consolidated, with a large proportion of workers being thrown into
situations of greater fragility and destitution.

Based on this historical and structural process, certain workers in
the healthcare and care work fields, ranging from cleaning staff to
informal care workers, are even more vulnerable because they are
largely invisible to the society at large. This is a reality rooted in
historical and social factors intersecting class, gender, and race. As
a direct consequence, these workers have less control over their
working conditions and do not benefit from the same regulations and
state protections, therefore facing greater health and security risks.

As the precarity and fear of loss of income loom large, workers are
less likely to organize and unionize, becoming more vulnerable to
overexploitation, poor working conditions, and job insecurity.
Fighting for their basic rights seems harder and harder with time.

And, as we know, women make up a vast majority of these sectors. The
same historical and social factors also explain why women make about
30% less than men in the same job/role. In the same line, this is also
how women have become the ones responsible for unpaid domestic work,
and all the care work that permeates private and personal
relationships.

The process of naturalizing these functions – as if they were
women’s _natural_ responsibility – has taken root in society in
such a way that these patriarchal ideas are difficult to combat. It
will take a great deal of effort to reverse this logic, which
ultimately exploits and oppresses women all over the world.

PD: _What has been the impact of the pandemic on women workers in
general, in terms of their employment and income? Additionally, what
did you find about the conditions of domestic workers in your study?_

RPB: In our study we show that women workers are suffering greatly
due to the pandemic, in terms of job security, precarious informal
employment, declining income and social vulnerability.

Women are disproportionately employed in many of the industries most
severely affected by the crisis. About 510 million of all women
employed globally work in the four most affected industries: hotels,
restaurants, retail, and manufacturing. Women are also predominantly
employed in domestic work, healthcare, and social services, putting
them at a greater risk of contracting COVID-19 and of losing their
source of income if they become infected. They are also less likely to
have access to social protections.

The formal sector often (and historically) closes its doors to women,
and they are left with no alternative and (forced to occupy) the
informal sector, in which they are subjected to precarious working
conditions and low pay.

Even before the pandemic, more than 1.6 billion people — half of the
global workforce — worked in the informal sector, constantly faced
with the possibility of losing their livelihoods. A considerable part
is made up of women. In our study we present data from the UN which
estimates that informal workers around the world lost 60 percent of
their income in the first month of the pandemic. In Latin America it
figured even worse: 80 percent.

Domestic workers across the world account for a key sector of the
informal workforce. 80 percent of this sector of the workforce is made
up of women. In addition to suffering from many of the same conditions
as other informal workers — such as job insecurity and precarious
conditions — domestic workers are often deprived of the scarce
protections afforded to other precarious workers.

As the economic crisis deepens, domestic workers are haunted by the
uncertainty of whether or not they will still have a job after the
quarantine.

PD: _What has been the impact of this crisis on members of the
LGBTQIA+ community — in terms of their work, income, housing, access
to healthcare, and other rights?_

RPB: The worst effects of the pandemic have been felt by marginalized
communities along the lines of class, race, sexual orientation,
gender, and — notably — gender identity.

The first challenge in measuring the impact of COVID-19 on the
transgender community is that data is largely unavailable. But the
lack of data is already significant in itself. The lack of care for
this population ranges from basic issues such as recognition of its
existence, qualification and quantification of its conditions, so that
the necessary measures can be taken. The vulnerability of this
community is linked to pre-existing conditions caused by transphobia,
strongly combined with class and race characteristics that preceded
the pandemic, which puts them even more in the cross-hairs of
COVID-19.

While it is impossible to fully quantify the impact of the pandemic on
transgender people, support networks in the transgender community see
this reality in their lives and on the streets, pointing to
disproportionately high numbers of transgender people among the
unemployed and unhoused.

The lack of family support and the social prejudice to which most
transgender people are subjected means that many of them are homeless.
Even precarious housing complexes ask transgender people to vacate
their rented houses, due to prejudice, fear and lack of information.

Compounding this is the fact that many transgender people do not have
basic identification documentation, and this lack of documentation
also excludes them from basic aid programs.

It is also known that transgender people are systematically excluded
from the formal labor market and are most often left with the option
of sex work or begging. The loss of income precipitated by the
pandemic only aggravated already worsening conditions such as the
inability to access food, medication, and other basic necessities.

Studies in Argentina and the US show that around 40% of transgender
people attempted suicide at some point in their lives – eight times
more than the rate for the population as a whole. In Brazil, the
average life expectancy for transgender people is less than half for
that of the general population.

Until we have quantifiable data and information to deal with the
situation of this population, the transgender community will continue
to suffer more intensely from the health, social and economic crises
in their countries.

PD: _Across the world, there has been one advisory common in all
countries — stay at home. At such a time, how have governments
responded to the demands of movements fighting for housing and land
rights, such as MST in Brazil, Abahlali baseMjandolo in South Africa,
etc? What significance do these movements have for women in
particular?_

RPB: During the pandemic, there were several examples of governments
not only ignoring the struggle for housing and land (land reform), but
also – especially in the three cases mentioned – criminalizing and
promoting evictions and greater conflict and social vulnerability.

This is the result of policies adopted by capitalist states in this
period, driven by a concern for profits rather than a concern for
humanity. Among the heartless policies implemented during this period
are the evictions of individuals, families, and entire communities in
the midst of the pandemic. Women and children have lost their homes,
and, as a result, their livelihood, as was the case with families
brutally evicted
[[link removed]] from
an MST encampment
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Brazil in August of this year. The evictions that are underway in
South Africa, as well as the forced migration in India after the
lockdown was announced with little notice or state support, are two
examples of the reality faced by the majority of the world’s people
in capitalist states in the midst of the pandemic.

We are talking about entire families being evicted or left on the
street without any support in the middle of a pandemic. Women and
children who, instead of being able to respect the advice of WHO and
experts to stay at home and avoid agglomerations, were exposed by the
Bolsonaro, Modi and Ramaphosa governments to a greater risk of
contamination and to greater vulnerability and social violence. Many
people were injured and many others died.

It is also important to mention that evictions place women at a very
high risk of sexual assault when they have to sleep out in the open
after evictions. They also cause tremendous stress and anxiety for
children, the impact of which is largely managed by women. Some women
have even lost male partners in these incidents of state violence.

For many women who are part of these movements (MST, Abahlali
baseMjandolo) this has been a way of life to conquer a house or a
piece of land where they can grow food to sell and to survive. Public
policies that are not part of the government’s agendas if there is
no struggle to achieve them.

PD: _During the lockdowns that have been imposed in the last year in
different parts of the world, violence against women and members of
other marginalized genders surged. Can you tell us what you found
about this trend and the reasons behind it?_

RPB: It is important to say that before the pandemic, we already
faced a global reality in which women were exposed to patriarchal
violence. It is not something that comes with the pandemic. However,
lockdown situations, historically, aggravate this violence –
especially domestic violence. Using available data, this is what we
show in our study.

Unemployment, overcrowding, remote work, an overburden of reproductive
work, increasing impoverishment, a crisis of one’s ability to
maintain one’s economic livelihood, and drug and alcohol abuse are
some of the elements that exacerbate gender-based violence — even
more so during the pandemic. Women’s groups warn that lockdown
conditions may be used by abusers to control the behavior of their
partners, blocking their access to security and support.

A key aspect, therefore, that impacts women who face domestic violence
is that they often become deprived of all social and professional
bonds, growing apart from family, friends, and colleagues, which in
turn increases their dependence on their abusers.

Additionally, women’s and feminist organizations have been
denouncing not only the increase in cases of patriarchal violence
during quarantine, but also the increasing brutality of instances of
abuse. And I think this is very key to understand and analyze this
from a political point of view as well.

Inspired by a neofascist ideology, the rhetoric adopted by heads of
government who vocally promote hatred and encourage misogynistic
attitudes inevitably legitimizes perpetrators of violence against
women.

This happens as neofascist conceptions about female subordination
overshadow more enlightened ideas about women. These views have been
spreading on a large scale under Brazil’s Bolsonaro, India’s Modi,
and so many other countries with conservative right-wing
administrations.

Violence is then seen as an ordinary or normal act that authorities
will not prevent or fight; quite the opposite — it is actually
encouraged. This contributes significantly to increasing incidences of
violence: fighting and eliminating people is the rule of barbarism,
which is supported by hate speech, the failure to hold perpetrators
accountable for their actions, and the failure to take legal action
and punish these attitudes.

It shows how the pandemic is making clearer the historical and social
problems of this society, and even more than that, how it is
deteriorating to the point of triggering its own inefficiency and
decline. Fighting for another society that cares for women and life is
a necessary task for our future.

_Renata Porto Bugni, Tricontinental Deputy Director, is a public
policy analyst, an activist and a teacher. She has a bachelor’s
degree in international relations at UNESP. Her master’s degree from
the University of São Paulo (USP) was on public policies for
Brazilian women, notably in the fight against violence. Renata's
political career began in Brazil's student movement. She is now a
member of the political organisation Consulta Popular.  She is based
in São Paulo._

_Check out the CoronaShock and Patriarchy study produced by the
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research here
[[link removed]].
As part of the study and through conversations with women’s
organizations and feminist activities, they compiled a list of demands
called “The People’s Feminist Demands,” they lay out necessary
and urgent measures needed to ensure that no one is left behind as we
move through this crisis._

_[Peoples Dispatch brings you a series of articles and videos on 2020,
a momentous year that saw humanity face unprecedented challenges. The
beacon of hope remained the historic resistance mounted by people’s
movements, and the care and solidarity they epitomized, proving yet
again that our collective struggles alone can dismantle and end
oppression. You can read the full series here
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