Impact of COVID-19 National Lockdown on Women Domestic Workers in Delhi

The severity of COVID-19 has led the government of India to impose one of the stringent lockdown and quarantine measure in the world. India is under a national lockdown since 25 March 2020 in order to maintain ‘social distancing’ to control the spread of the disease which has resulted in chaos, especially amongst the informal sector workers. The Director-General of ILO, Guy Ryder pointed out that, ‘in urban areas, these workers also tend to work in economic sectors that “not only carry a high risk of virus infection but are also directly impacted by lockdown measures”: waste recyclers, street vendors and food servers, construction workers, transport workers and domestic workers. Further, pandemics make existing inequalities worse for women and girls, causes discrimination to other marginalized groups and those in extreme poverty. The condition of women workers in the informal economy gets more vulnerable owing to their roles as workers in the market as well as care givers within their families. Prof. Jayati Ghosh points out that women in the informal economy will be the first ones to lose their jobs as they also hold the lowest jobs in the market