COVID-19 and Women Warriors in Health Sector in West Bengal

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak is impacting societies around the world in an unprecedented manner. With an intention to break the chain of coronavirus spread, India went for complete nationwide lockdown from 24 March 2020. While the comparatively rich and privileged classes could sustain their normal life during the longest period of lock down, it was primarily the poor and the marginalized sections that had to bear the cost. In this pandemic the weaknesses of our health system have been thoroughly exposed but the frontline health workers put up a brave face while attending the COVID-infected patients taking life risk. In this paper, I have tried to capture how our front-line women warriors of the health sector are fighting the disease and the consequences they have to face while carrying out their duties. As the pandemic has given rise to certain fear and anxiety in the public mind, the front-line women health workers have to face additional vulnerability for no fault of their own. Ironically, as compared to the male health workers, the female workers suffer more. For writing this paper, I have relied on secondary data published in newspapers and journals and supplemented those with my own ethnographic findings.