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COVID-19 and the Decent Work Agenda
The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us how valuable time is. We were and still are in a constant race against time. We raced to produce a vaccine to save as many lives as possible, we raced to implement interventions before each new wave hit and the same is happening right now. All of this is in an effort to increase the amount of time we get to spend on earth or to ensure our survival as individuals and as the human race. Time is of…
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Five ways to measure the effects of a crisis like COVID-19 on women
Social issues and crises tend to affect women more severely than men. This is why terms like “gender mainstreaming policies”, “gender-responsive interventions” and “gender-based budgeting” have become more popular in public policy discussions in recent years. The case has been made for the need to include gender in every analysis of social policy. But many of the toolkits which have been designed to do so have come up short. This is for a variety of reasons. Some of these shortcomings include a singular focus on…
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Pandemic underscores burden women carry doing paid and unpaid reproductive labour
Debates about women’s unpaid reproductive labour have been going on since the first woman received cash for her services. Reproductive labour includes cooking, cleaning, and caring for the elderly, the sick and children. It’s important to make the distinction between paid and unpaid reproductive labour. Paid reproductive labour is performed in exchange for money or a wage. Unpaid reproductive labour is done for free, and usually for the household in which the individual lives. This reproductive work has traditionally been undervalued by both formal and…
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To say a whole damned mouth full
During the last few decades a lot of awareness has been created in South Africa surrounding the education of what non-verbal and physical sexual harassment is. The number of sexual offences that have been reported has increased from 64 512 during the 2001/2012 period to more than 66 000 sexual offences reported during the 2012/2013 period. This clearly indicates that people are feeling more empowered to report sexual offences or that sexual offences are on the increase. Either way, though it may not be all…
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The Handmaid’s fictional (but arguably realistic) Tale
I recently finished a few seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale (based on the novel by Margaret Atwood), and found the story quite fascinating. What I liked most about it was (though it was an extreme example) its depiction of how quickly freedoms can be removed, but also the demonstration of how social institutions work in reality. For those who don’t know the story, it essentially plays out in a society where fertility has dropped significantly and a regime had been adopted where fertile women are…
