Seeing Lock-down from Atypical Perspective

Shaiya Binte Mahbub।। When the whole world is standing helplessly, anxiously and vulnerably in front of this Pandemic lockdown situation, let us see the world from a new dimension, altogether. Although, facing this deadly threat, all other existing social threats such as racial discrimination, religious rage, socio-economic inequalities should have been disappeared, perhaps we see them practicing and rising and conditioning people to death before they even die of COVID-19. For a long period of time, feminists are struggling to make us all understand that by disregarding women’s position in the society we are on the other hand paying no attention to the labor, mostly the labors which are unpaid or lowly paid. While standing in front of such catastrophe, I, a university faculty, my neighbor as a banker or doctor, nurse, media representatives, garment workers, cleaner, security in-charge, maids, greengrocers and almost all of us are tagged with the same scale of importance.

We are not all locked down! There are women, still working outside while the whole world is lockdown. I know my friends who are working as doctors, leaving their only toddlers at home, not coming back to residence even after duty just to ensure that the child and family are staying out of danger. We should know that according to WHO, around 90% of the nurses are female in the world and in Bangladesh the number is approximately 93%. Nurses are the most important frontline laborers who receive patients from the hospital doors and following them up with necessary recommendations made by the doctors. Nurses are even more vulnerably near to the COVID patients, staying up and always over the duty, not going to home in fear of spreading the disease among others. However we say that nursing is merely a sophisticated and less competitive job done by women because it requires only care and less cognitive skills! Currently, I am relying on virtual teaching and meeting, and we can all feel that even if we give our 100% in virtual education still there will be a difference between this and the real classroom efficiency. But we all have to admit that at this situation for living, going virtual and ensuring distant education are the safest options. The person who is missed terribly by each family during pandemic is none other than maid or cleaner. We have realized really late that how much their presence matter to us. They save time our time and energy to the most. Garment laborers, not only make their lives by working, they build our economy so that we get stuffs of our basic need at lower price. I don’t want to drag every profession here and explain that how much they matter to us, I would rather say during this restlessness it’s high time to realize the significance of every profession, especially the so called ‘low skilled and low paid’ professions.

It is a positive change that many men who have always seen and learned cooking, taking care of children or household and cleaning as ‘womanly profession’; now without maids  or cleaners and food delivery services or restaurants, are trying take part or paying interest in familial responsibilities. On the other hand, issues are rising regarding domestic violence or abuse, even many are aware of the increasing number of mental health issues but we should also consider that at least now, for the sake of pandemic all gender categories are working together to fight it from their end. On this regard, there is no remedy which is better than providing knowledge and creating awareness. Writers, thinkers, social service holders and all concerned bodies of the society should take distant steps to make people aware of mental health or multilayered violence by taking help from different media. Likewise, we cannot overlook the already caused harm to the world by ignoring Mother Nature’s wellbeing. For the time being, we can see how less gathering can promote peace; it has lessen pollution of any kind, even it has already reduced crimes and accidents significantly. The problems like social violence, inequality and pollution are hard nuts to crack, yet we should not ignore the positive outlook towards lockdown, as well! Let the social distancing to be an indicator or measure of our flaws and then work together on it to unify ourselves for a better world.

Above all these, when we see that underprivileged people are running here and there for safe haven, they are deprived of proper medical assistance, garment workers and day laborers are rushing due to uncertainty to save their jobs and millions of people are starving out of food, many are ignorant to understand the severity of the disease; subsequently we realize that this lockdown, social distancing, sanitization, self-hygiene protection etc are applicable only for those who has guaranteed shelter, secured income and plenty of food. The advantage of Corona may be only felt by this privileged category of the society. The rest only remains in dark. The proposition is when the pandemic gets over, this time it’s really crucial that, we give equal value to every kind of labor performed by any human. Can’t we do that? Yes, we can. Let us fight this pandemic with knowledge by empowering each other, so that when it ends it will be the end of all social evils.

Shaiya Binte Mahbub: Lecturer, Brac University, Dhaka, Bangladesh