Women, informal rural work, and Covid-19: towards new gender-sensitive policies? 

A cross-case study: Mali, Chile, and India.

by Lucile de Laforcade

Lucile de Laforcade is an undergraduate International Relations (BA) student in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Currently an Intersectionality and Gender Mainstreaming Student Representative, her interests in history and politics intersect with the questions of gender, identity and inequality, and their implications for IR.

Abstract

This article explores the double impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic consequences on women in informal rural labour. Particularly, it focuses on three developing countries, Mali, Chile and India. After establishing a picture of the situation for informal female workers in all three countries, this article will report and assess different policy initiatives. It will conclude on the necessity for new and sustained gender-sensitive policies in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin American and South Asia to mitigate an exacerbating social crisis.

A year in after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the social and economic consequences of the sanitary crisis are starting to unfold worldwide, particularly in developing regions with large informal economies. While there proves to be a multitude of jobs which are considered informal, this article will be focusing on the agricultural sector and its informal rural workers in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Southern Asia, making up for 90 percent of the labour force (FAO, 2020: 1). Among them, a staggering 68 percent are female contributing family workers (Bonnet, Vanek & Chen, 2019: 9), which bear the heaviest burden and the lasting effects of the pandemic and the recession. These add to the evident lack of social protection faced by informal workers who, by their very status, do not fit the existing framework of regulations (Hussmanns, 2004). 

Facing the grave socio-political impacts of the pandemic and the economic crisis on informal female workers, governmental responses have appeared disproportionately uneven. On their way to recovery, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Southern Asia must follow the path of gender-sensitive labour policies and extend them to their informal workers. Governmental responses need to consider the most vulnerable rural informal workers by acknowledging, protecting and supporting their activities and livelihoods. While direct actions must be taken to prevent a social emergency from adding up to lively sanitary and economic crises, long-term and sustainable strategies should be developed, ultimately benefiting the economy as a whole.     

A comparative focus on Mali, Chile and India, as well as their respective labour policies will highlight the need for an inclusive and comprehensive policy engagement, based on what is missing, what works, and what could potentially work.  

For a great share of women in developing countries, vulnerability and poverty have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. While seasonal and temporary work in the agricultural sector is inherently volatile and unstable, the disruption of the food market and the subsequent decrease in demand have caused great losses of incomes (ILO, 2020) - up to 81 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America (UN Women, 2020).  Such dynamic is also experienced by women entrepreneurs in these rural economies, where the closure of markets and the decline of cross-border trade has prevented them from selling their products at competitive price, or indeed selling them at all (Salcedo-La Viña, Singh & Elwell., 2020). Still an exceedingly small minority, they lack the economic status to receive productive and financial resources, an appropriate recognition and support at the governmental level, and most importantly an access to technologies and information (FAO, 2020). Consequently, curtailed incomes give way to threatened livelihoods, as the drastic reduction in markets and means of transportation due to lockdown measures also impacted the food security of rural informal workers in Mali, Chile and India (HLPE, 2020).  

Added to this is the question of “dying from hunger or from the virus” (ILO, 2020, 1), spurring women to further provide for their households’ needs through the continuation of work or the undertaking of a new job in the informal sector, thus sacrificing their own physical security and health, as well as that of their families. An appalling sanitary issue is therefore hidden behind the sole economic one. As relevant information and medical treatment hardly reach rural areas, the lives and livelihoods of farm workers will be put at considerable risk (FAO, 2020). A heightened focus must be put on informal female rural workers particularly, as they already lack sufficient health care coverage, and whose sexual and reproductive rights are not protected accordingly (Kanem, 2018). 

Thereupon, besides the hardships posed by their agricultural informal work in times of Covid-19, another important dynamic is worth noticing: the heightened domestic difficulties faced by informal rural female workers. This is due to the closure of schools as a response to the pandemic outbreak, which has exacerbated the burden of childcare as well as that of housework by 37 percent for women (UN Women, 2020). As they are propelled to opt out of the labour force, women experience a greater isolation from the labour economy, thus a worsening withdrawal from rural food markets. The United Nations (UN) have already anticipated the long-term effects of this marginalization, by predicting that 435 million women may reach the extreme poverty threshold of $1,90 a day worldwide (UN Women, 2020). A further 47 million will be pushed into poverty by 2021 because of the pandemic. Such figures are especially eloquent for rural female informal workers, whose already extremely critical livelihoods make them one of the poorest workforces.   

However, poverty is not the only factor leading to marginalization. In Mali, Chile and India, female overrepresentation in the informal agricultural sector is a product of embedded discriminations and gender-based difficulties.  

Under the Malian family code, women’s role in the agricultural sector is decided by their husbands, who hold the rights of access to and control over land (Diarra, 2017). Being the sole contributing family workers, and thus falling through the cracks of formal employment, Malian women face severe limitations to empowerment, economic independence, and representation in policymaking. The pandemic of Covid-19 as well as the recession have only exacerbated this, highlighting informal Malian female workers’ vulnerabilities, and the need for gender-based economic measures (IFAD, 2021).  

Chile’s deep gender inequalities have also resurfaced with the pandemic. The persistence of the conjugal society – a default marital regime making the husband responsible for the household and marital property – has greatly dampened Chilean women’s financial inclusion and independence. Informal work thus seems to be the only solution, particularly when female workers’ legal rights and economic opportunities are limited by a poor legal framework of protection and gender-based violence and discrimination (Santagostino Recavarren & Arekapudi, 2020).  

In India, the jodi system [couple] hires workers as a couple while only recognising men as workers, making women invisible and therefore unprotected (Patel, 2021); such vulnerability has in turn been exacerbated by the pandemic and the recession. Moreover, structural discrimination still permeating Indian society has largely contributed to the violation of labour standards, such as non-payment in many rural areas (Patel, 2021).  

Governmental action therefore appears urgently required in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and South Asia, where the pandemic has highlighted the need for reinforced social protection - especially that of informal rural and agriculture female workers - whose very existences and livelihoods remain invisible to labor laws. Therefore, new gender sensitive and inclusive policies must be implemented to protect female rural informal workers and raise awareness on their vital role for the well-functioning of our society.  

Particularly, widespread and accessible temporary financial solutions (cash transfers, vouchers, unemployment compensation) are critical to support women in the informal economy considering the sanitary crisis. In Sub-Saharan Africa - where the world’s largest labour force is concentrated - as well as Latin America and Southeast Asia, auspicious yet limited measures on the protection and support of informal workers have been implemented with direct financial assistance, and even support funds (Megersa, 2020).  

However, these initiatives represent a water drop in the troublesome ocean of rural informal labour. Indeed, not all women working in the informal rural sector can benefit from them. Particularly, further marginalization occurs with the intersectionality of inequalities, such as disabilities, age, ethnicity or religion (Patel, 2021).  

Some women, living in the most isolated rural areas and without access to education and technology, see their prospects of benefitting from state aid significantly reduced.  

In the long run, more sustained, broader, and more comprehensive policies should be adopted. While Mali’s governmental gender-sensitive responses for informal rural workers are particularly constrained, some promising initiatives have spurred in India and Chile.  

In India, the SEWA’s (Self Employed Women’s Association) has put forward both a short-term strategy and an innovative long-term plan focused on the agriculture sector and its female workers, in light of the Covid-19 pandemic (ILO, 2020; ITUC, 2020). While the association’s direct response involved health kits and cash transfers for sustenance, a more comprehensive and sustainable approach based on three main pillars - the protection, reconstruction, and enhancement of female agriculture workers’ livelihoods - was put forward as part of the SEWA’s greater action plan. The initiative is especially commendable regarding rural women entrepreneurs. Indeed, its Leelawati project involves trainings in digital skills for small corporations of women workers to overcome the physical barriers posed by lockdown to trade and movement. As 20-year-old Muskaben Vohara explains, “Not only were we able to continue our work uninterrupted […], we sold off all our stocks” (Safavian, Arora & Laxman, 2021). While fostering economic independence and enabling the preservation of livelihoods, Leelawati also permits the political, social, and financial empowerment of Indian women working in the informal sector (Safavian, Arora & Laxman, 2021).  

On an international scale, Chile has, through the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) forum, implemented La Serena Roadmap. This comprehensive set of policy-actions seeks to ensure the greater inclusion of women in the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on their economic empowerment, the strengthening of their labour force participation, their representation and access to leadership positions, and their sustained education and training (APEC, 2019). While Chile’s initiative still needs to prove its efficacity, the Roadmap is a necessary step to be taken by other developing rural economies, such as Mali. 

To conclude, the Covid-19 pandemic has greatly exacerbated existing inequalities faced by women in informal rural economies. Examples drawn from Mali, Chile and India stress the need for sustained measures focused on the financial, physical and psychological support of the lives of women working in the informal sector and/or with care responsibilities, as well as their representation nationally and internationally in all spheres of policymaking. Expanding this framework of protection to Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia equally could represent first yet necessary steps towards a safer and more equal approach to informal rural labour. 

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