For American women avoiding the virus wasn’t enough, but they’ve also had to overcome a labor earthquake in the services sector with the decline in tourism, consumption and economic activity in general, while juggling the domestic budget, the family life and the education of children in captivity.
Across America, women are being driven en masse from the labor market by the coronavirus pandemic, taking charge of household chores, suspending their economic independence, and exposing themselves to insecurity that could last for decades.
In the United States, the vast majority of those who became unemployed in January were women; in Mexico, two-thirds of all jobs lost in the pandemic were in the hands of women, while in Argentina, progress in women’s integration has been reversed.
CONDEMNED TO THE HOUSE
The arrival of the pandemic in Argentina practically coincided with the start of the school year, and the little ones turned the classrooms into virtual spaces, in a process that required great effort and dedication on the part of the parents, as happened with Verónica Palmero, with whom she had to quit her job to take care of her four children aged 9, 8, 5 and 3.
After a first month of trying to combine caring with their jobs, she and her husband decided in April that Verónica would leave the pizzeria where she worked for the past six years, radically changing her daily life. led her to a depression that she managed to overcome over time.
This young woman of nearly 30 years old, living in the province of Buenos Aires, also had to give up her studies in pharmacy, as she was not only shortening her time, but also her income, and she had to look for alternative sources to cover her daily expenses. .
“We found things on the street, we fixed them and sold them on (…) Or we exchanged things for merchandise, maybe I had some clothes that didn’t work for me, but they were new and I replaced them with 2 packs of flour , and we ate for two days, ”he explains.
About 7,000 kilometers to the north, in the impoverished state of Chiapas, something similar happened to Regina López, 34, who had to quit her job as a housekeeper to be with her children.
“I saw they needed me and I decided to be with them to help them and not leave them for long, because going to work in another house means leaving them abandoned,” he tells Efe from the suburbs from San Cristóbal de las. Casas.
NO WORK, NO DREAMS
But this reality is not exclusive to developing countries or countries with less economic potential. In Hollywood, Florida, USA, Inés Santiesteban, a Colombian-American, has the feeling that there is no way out of the problems facing the pandemic.
“We need a desperate solution. Unemployment benefits will end in March and I haven’t found a job for nearly a year,” explains Santiesteban, who worked 18 years as a cleaner at the Diplomat Hotel for Florida’s tourist beaches. , until it was fired with no compensation or health insurance on the excuse that the pandemic made the company unsustainable.
At the start of the pandemic last year, the diplomat decided to turn the sale over to a new owner and fired most of his employees, including many women like Santiesteban, without any compensation.
Santiesteban suspects that managers took advantage of the pandemic to get rid of their employees and now plan to sell the entire complex to another investor. Right now, the main help comes from the union Unite Here, which is facilitating their access to food banks and even helping them hang these difficult Christmas gifts on the tree.
“Thank goodness I have my husband’s help to deal with the punishments, but I have companions who have to do everything on my own: take classes, find work, and bring food home. I’d love to help them, but the only thing I can do is teach them to apply for unemployment benefits, which is now more complicated than before, ”explains the mother of the family, who is dependent on an insufficient subsidy of $ 247 a week.
“We have to choose between the rent or the medicines. All the savings we had are already gone. I never thought I would see myself in such a situation in this country,” he complains.
In Chiapas, López has to deal with the vicissitudes of domestic workers, traditionally subjected to more informality and who have seen the security of their small job disappear like bubbles.
“First they gave me 200 pesos ($ 10) for half a day of work, then the lady with that disease (the pandemic) gave me 150 pesos ($ 7.5) and then 100 pesos ($ 5). because I haven’t done anything with 100 pesos, ”he recalls.
PARALLEL LABOR MARKET
Last month, US Federal Reserve President Jerome Powell assured authorities that labor markets are facing parallel realities, especially in the case of women and minorities.
Black and Hispanic working women are most affected in all demographic segments of the US, with unemployment hovering around 10% (6.3% nationally), while their employment rate (people not working or looking for work) is above 2 %, higher than in men.
Argentine economic analyst Christian Buteler sees in these situations “the collateral damage of the pandemic about which little is said” and considers it particularly serious in those who were unable to participate in the teleworking method.
In Mexico, only 41.4% of women work in the labor market, compared to 45.2% last year, showing that despite the differences between countries, employment for women in general is still heavily focused on the service sector, the large loser in this pandemic.
“Since most of them are mothers, heads of household who are the breadwinners, sometimes responsible for the parents and not just the children, it is a very heavy burden that women bear,” María Isidra Llanos told Efe, general secretary of the university. . domestic workers union of mexico.
Many who lost or quit their jobs had to sell their cleaning supplies to get some food or choose to work for their neighbors and be closer to their homes, the organization said.
As Buteler points out, this is an issue that is rarely discussed but has a major impact and the long-term consequences of which are difficult to reverse.
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Mitzi Mayauel Fuentes Gómez and Eduard Ribas from Mexico, Aitor Pereira from Buenos Aires and Jairo Mejía from New York.