We endure because we need money: Everyday violence, Covid-19, and domestic workers in South Africa

Abstract

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has made the lives of domestic workers, who are mostly women, more difficult. Building on the testimonies of domestic workers in South Africa collected between January and August 2021, this article examines everyday violence they face during the pandemic. It argues that everyday violence is greatly amplified during the pandemic, because the virus not only affects domestic workers’ livelihoods, but generates new forms of discriminations at work. The article calls for expanded worker alliances in the informal sector to be built to push back against everyday violence and reduce their vulnerabilities.

Rights

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

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Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2023.2166024

Repository URI

https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/06ef379f-850c-445e-ad8d-b08daa3eb5c8