Coronavirus taking a toll on women

“I feel stressed. Some customers have stopped buying (my porridge) because they fear exchanging the hard cash. How will I survive?”
This is Martha Wahu’s outcry. She is a single mother of two who hawks porridge in Kiambu town for a living.

“I depend on my daily earnings. I must go out every day to sell to meet my needs and cater for my children,” Wahu tells Nation on phone Monday.

She is stressed that her customers have started changing their consumption behaviour, translating to reduced earnings.
Moreover, a looming lockdown disturbs her.

She has no idea what will become of her and her children without access to her customers who include industrial and construction workers, teachers and business people in the town.

“Where will I get the money to buy food for my children?” she queries.

Interact with the infected

Kenya is among the 144 countries that have so far, confirmed cases of the fatal coronavirus (COVID-19) which has claimed at least 5,800 people with more than 150,000 infected globally.

The government has quarantined three people infected in medical facilities to contain the spread even as the National Emergency Response Committee on Coronavirus traces those who may have interacted with the infected.

On March 15, 2020, President Uhuru Kenyatta decreed a raft of measures to keep Kenyans safe and free from COVID-19, a disease with acute respiratory syndrome resulting to death if not contained early.

He suspended learning in all institutions including primary, secondary and universities and tertiary institutions.

He also urged government offices, businesses and companies to allow employees to work from home, with the exception of those working in critical or essential services.

Unfortunately, the impact of this epidemic described as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) disproportionally affects women.

Daily supplies

Women run more than 60 per cent of informal business in Kenya as shown by 2016 survey on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) by Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).

Wahu is one of those women and her business exemplifies dependency on daily supplies and lacks a safety measure such as insurance to cushion herself from this kind of economic shock.

“Studies have shown that women in the informal sector make less money than men. They, therefore, don’t save a lot and don’t save at all,” says Chryspin Afifu, a policy expert on women empowerment.

“The psychological distress becomes inexplicable when they are pushed to the core to provide for their families in emergencies (coronavirus) like this hit,” he adds.

“In fact, it increases chances of domestic violence because the wife is expected to provide groceries and yet she cannot manage, and the husband does not want to understand her predicament,” he noted.

It is even worse for the single mothers who have to work triple times to provide for the family.

Single mothers

“Families run by single mothers are at a higher risk of instability because once the mother is either sick, cannot go to work, or is not fully productive, we are talking about a collapsed household,” he states.

“That is the risk coronavirus poses to homes led by the single mothers,” he noted.

A combination of children at home and working from home, poses another challenge for women.

Hours spent on unpaid labour will extend as children will seek their mothers’ attention consuming their working time. This is notwithstanding the fact that unpaid labour is still an economic burden to Kenyan women.

On average, Kenyan women spend up to 11.1 hours per day on domestic work unlike the 2.9 hours men donate to the similar duties based on Oxfam Kenya's findings in Gendered Patterns on Unpaid Care and Domestic Work in the Urban Informal Settlements of Nairobi 2019 report.

Nurses

“The home environment does not provide a conducive space for women to work when the children are around.” said Afifu.

“They will end up being unproductive or produce unexpected results which will put them in trouble with their bosses,” he added.

In the medical field, women will carry a heavier burden. In Africa, 65 per cent of the nurses are female according to WHO. And Kenya is not an exception.

With counties being put on alert and preparing to handle the coronavirus patients, it is expected that the female nurses would work either for long hours or more will be on the roster, since they are the majority.

Wuhan test

In China-the epicentre of the epidemic, for example, two young female medical professionals, who committed to working for long hours to attend COVID-19 patients in Wuhan, were infected.

One eventually died and another surviving. Women in the aviation industry, are neither off the radar. There are more women serving as flight attendants than men. They usher in the travellers, serve them and respond to their needs during the flight, hence exposing them more to the infected individuals.

As at December 2017, female flight attendants constituted 79.5 per cent of certified crew, data from Federal Aviation Administration shows.