The Covid-19 pandemic has been hard on Batswana women. Well before the virus was detected in Botswana, scores of women, especially those manning the informal sector, were supporting themselves and their families on inadequate wages. However, as the respiratory virus started snaking its way across the country beginning of March 2020, coronavirus-mitigation lockdowns sent unemployment rates skyrocketing and thousands of jobs disappeared.
In a bid to address the needs of informal sector businesses in the short- and medium-terms, Botswana launched the Botswana National Informal Sector Recovery Plan in August 2020. Among other things, the Recovery Plan was intended to ensure these needs are prioritised through the establishment of dedicated support structures. The Plan also established that “the total estimated number of persons employed in the informal sector was 191,176,” adding that “the immediate post-lockdown profile indicated a vulnerable informal sector, one that is predominantly female and highly vulnerable to economic shocks.”
Of the “191, 176” people manning the informal sector in Botswana, it is estimated that over 60% of them are women. Whilst the country has done very well to suppress the Covid-19 infection rate, the limited gains made by women in the last few decades are at risk of being rolled back.
Botswana’s 48 day lockdown which was necessitated in order to curb the spread of the virus not only deepened pre-existing entrenched inequalities, but to a large extent exposed women’s social and economic vulnerabilities which are in turn increasing the impact of the pandemic. This has resulted in female headed households suffering the most and experiencing an increase in relative poverty.
Although everyone is susceptible to coronavirus, in Botswana there are clear gendered power dynamics and imbalances and; women and girls are the most affected. According to the UN, “around the world, women generally earn less and save less, are the majority of single-parent households and disproportionately hold more insecure jobs in the informal economy or service sector with less access to social protections,” states a United Nations newsletter entitled How Covid-19 impacts women and girls.
As a way of helping citizens stay afloat due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, Botswana like many other countries around the world has mainly focused on rapid assistance to help families get by.
While the Informal Sector Recovery Plan agrees that “directed support is therefore required for participants of the informal sector,” and that “such support is especially needed for women entrepreneurs as one of the more vulnerable groups operating within the informal sector,” the truth is that gender considerations have justifiably not been central in the government’s efforts to help women in the informal sector to stay afloat. While a sizeable number of higher wage jobs in Botswana transitioned from an in-person to remote work environment, that was not the case for the majority of low-wage informal jobs which rely mostly on interaction between customers and workers.
Meanwhile the U.N issued a stark warning that gender neutral or gender blind social protection programmes do more harm than good. While wages in the informal sector in Botswana were frequently below the minimum wage, enforcement of legal protections meant to cover informal-sector workers was rare.
Speaking to The Telegraph, an activist said although it is unquestionable that the Covid-19 pandemic threatens to worsen gender inequalities, social protection that does not take gender into consideration only has the potential to reinforce these inequalities. “The evidence is out there which clearly highlights that women will be the hardest hit by this pandemic in Botswana, so the government just has to apply an intentional gender lens in order to achieve gender equality,” says Dimpho Thipe.
Balancing work and family obligations has long been the reality for women across Botswana. Generally, women have been the primary caregivers in their families. This has remained true even as majority of women work outside the home and provide vital contributions to household income. A former medical health practitioner who spoke to The Telegraph says if the government fails to resolve the issue of low-paid, insecure work and to assist the most vulnerable and marginalised groups, it would exacerbate the precarious conditions of women manning the informal sector. “Covid-19 is likely to worsen poverty which ultimately affects family dynamics since the country has a high number of single mothers who are the bread winners,” says Bonolo Masilo.
With women being the faces behind the headlines, there is need for policies which intentionally enable economic relief measures and deliberately target women, support women-led businesses as well as their income security. In Gaborone, *Gaone, a single mother of two who sells horticultural products at the Gaborone bus rank, lost more than 75 per cent of her income as social distancing guidelines drastically reduced the number of people visiting the market.
“Business was going well until everything got disrupted by the pandemic,” she says. Before the pandemic, she normally made between P2000 and P4000 in a month. “This has been reduced to below half since the beginning of the pandemic,” she adds.
*Gaone’s story is playing out in other parts of Botswana too. As the pandemic rages on, women will continue to shoulder an uneven share of its burden. Although there has been a steady recovery in the economy, low-wage jobs being manned by people in the informal sector will be the first to disappear again if there is a third wave.
The role of women in Botswana’s economy has shifted since independence, but our systems have not similarly evolved to support them. Because these conditions have been age-old, the solutions that government must put in place should not be focused on short-term recovery but should make lasting changes that aim to directly support women-owned and led businesses, close the wage gap and improve working conditions.
