The Balancing Act: Employed Women Navigating the COVID-19 Lockdown in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on women: female care workers are at the forefront of the crisis and are facing increased health risks; women are disproportionately affected by the employment drop related to COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing measures; they are exposed to an alarming increase in domestic violence and are shouldering heavier burdens at home in times of restricted movement. In other words, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing gender inequalities and vulnerabilities. While available reports and research crystallise the challenges faced by other vulnerable groups in general, there is a lack of insights to the unique challenges faced by formally employed women while negotiating the dynamics of home during full lockdowns. This lacuna is especially applicable to the Global South, given that the overwhelming majority of available research focuses on Western societies. In this backdrop, this article explores how formally employed women navigated the COVID-19 lockdown in Sri Lanka. A feminist reading of data gathered through a structured online questionnaire from 50 formally employed women as well as 15 men for the purpose of a comparative analysis sheds light on how far and in what ways employed women were able to balance their professional and personal commitments in a time of increased uncertainty and anxiety, while adopting new practices and deploying new skills. The article concludes that in spite of gendered expectations and challenges, employed women have been able to straddle both professional and domestic duties largely due to the unique resources available to them within the South Asian household. In addition, the article observes that the COVID-19 lockdown in Sri Lanka has opened up new spaces and practices that encourage both employers and employees to enable the better reconciliation of personal and professional spheres.

In employees’ favour or not?—The impact of virtual office platform on the work-life balances

“…This WFH concept was limited mostly to Information Technology (IT) firms and those that operate on IT-based processes and procedures. As such, along with the COVID-19 outbreak, organizations of this kind widely applied WFH in Sri Lanka as well, which impacted the lifestyle of employees both negatively and positively, depending on their atmosphere at home [4,5]. Even certain employees of generation "X" [6] were affected as their jobs were redundant or obsolete, since these employees could not adapt to the new technology; some of them were also reaching their retirement age.…”

Remote working during COVID-19 in Sri Lanka: lessons learned and what the future holds

“…Allen et al, 2015;Donnelly and Johns, 2021;Ollo-Lopez et al, 2020;Timsal and Awais, 2016) as well as during the pandemic (e.g. Carnevale and Hatak, 2020;Madero Gomez et al, 2020;Meegaswatta, 2021;Wang et al, 2021) has mainly explored areas such as the usefulness, effectiveness, challenges, advantages and disadvantages of remote working. The circumstances and usefulness of remote working vary before, during and after COVID.…”

Coronavirus and tourism: is there light at the end of the tunnel?

“…Job loss in the tourism industry turned out to be devastating and has particularly affected females, older people, less educated and less skilled workers, as well as local residents (Lopes et al 2021;Meegaswatta 2021;Seyfi et al 2022;World Economic Forum 2021). This was largely due to the fact that up to 80% of the tourism industry enterprises are small and medium-sized businesses, mostly local.…”