While the COVID-19 pandemic supposedly does not discriminate in terms of who will be infected, its harshest impacts are certainly felt by the poor. Another dimension is gender as women appear to be more vulnerable than men. As the UN itself noted, “the pandemic is deepening pre-existing inequalities, exposing vulnerabilities in social, political and economic systems which are in turn amplifying the impacts of the pandemic. Across every sphere, from health to the economy, security to social protection, the impacts of COVID-19 are exacerbated for women and girls simply by virtue of their sex.”
For rural women, especially the women farmers, the months-long lockdowns in the different countries in the region, the pandemic has been affecting them in various ways. The restrictions burden them in terms of bringing food on the family table every day. They could not attend to their fields nor bring their farm animals to the grasslands for food. They could not perform other economic activities that before the pandemic were at least available to them in trying to cope with ever worsening poverty, which the COVID-19 is greatly aggravating.
The Asian Peasant Coalition is organizing a Zoom webinar series entitled Peasants, Rise Up! and its second episode will focus on the plight of the rural women, particularly in India and the Philippines. This second episode will be held on June 9, 1pm Pakistan time (1:30pm India; 3pm Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand; 4pm Malaysia and Philippines).
Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific