Womenomics and Multi-tasking in the wake of COVID-19 in Mauritania
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As usual, women are once again proving their ability to contain crises and manage the affairs of their homes and families since the start of the pandemic, devoting themselves to several roles, mostly to relieve everyone around them. In the wake of this pandemic, women are acting as support pillars to relieve their children from the boredom of home quarantine and the burden of distance education. On the other hand, they get chafed by the loss of family income due to the COVID-19 pandemic and some obligations become more burdensome for them. Amid all this, are the most beautiful family moments they enjoy and keep a straight smile while continuing tirelessly and without boredom with all domestic and professional work.
Perhaps the burden of the pandemic imposed difficult living conditions, but women have always played a key role in all levels with strength and perseverance to overcome those circumstances. In families that husbands work far from home or single parents, women had to play the role of father, mother, and friend at the same time, for their children who COVID-19 have prevented from going to school and playing with their friends, with a keen interest to achieve family psychological stability, and trying to maintain the level of productivity in their work. All of these are challenges that no one could bear, had it not been that woman from time immemorial used to be able to contain everything that is family-related.
Most Mauritanian women in the wake of COVID-19 are multitasking as the wife, lover, daughter, and friend, and they are also the teacher and doctor, so many of them have become economic experts to manage the family’s financial crisis.
Aisha (a Mauritanian) explains her story, on how 24 hours a day are no longer enough for her in the time of COVID-19. She begins early in the morning teaching her children, and as soon as she finishes that, the time for food, then cleaning and disinfection of the house begins, and she takes some time to check on her mother, not to mention her work. All of this requires physical effort and time, but the most difficult, according to Aisha, is the effort that she makes trying to reduce the psychological burden of the pandemic on her husband, who lost his source of income due to restrictive measures to confront the pandemic and its economic consequences for her family. The social, psychological, and economic pressures that most Mauritanian women are undergoing during this crisis and the double effort that they exert at the expense of their health and private life exceed all difficulties as usual.
Fatou, who used to sell fried fish and couscous at night to sustain her family, lost her source of income due to quarantine measures. Her husband, a night tea, and coffee seller lost his source of income also. She did not succumb to the difficult conditions imposed by the pandemic on her family and faced it with determination and created a new opportunity to find a new source of income for her and her family members to stay until this crisis ends well, according to her. She says, “I started working from home sewing masks and some clothes and I told my neighborhood about that then I started to earn some money.” Continuing that the opening of the sewing shop made her attract customers who stayed, even after the gradual opening of the stores.
However, the pandemic was more dangerous for another woman (asked not to be mentioned), who works as a nurse in a government hospital, and she was not one of the mothers who were quarantined in homes with their children, but the crisis was more difficult for her, in addition to her work in the hospital on the shift system, which forced her absence some nights from home, the situation was different in light of the absence of nurseries and she can’t seek help from her family, as before because everyone is scared she could bring the virus home from the hospital. She added, “Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have been racing against time,” between working in the hospital and studying my children and the experience of distance learning that exhausted me a lot, and my husband, who is not used to preparing food or even teaching children, found himself obligated some days to do so, which made it difficult for all of us. The patriarchal system of Mauritania dictates that most men do not prepare food. Most of the food preparation chores is considered a wife’s role or domestic worker.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, women have had an effective role at all levels, whether they are wives, girls, sisters, or even grandmothers. They have also been searching for information more on social media than their male counterparts.
This is not strange to those who already know the importance of women and their role in society. When work stops and everyone must stay home, women put on their big heart that accommodates everyone, in addition to their main role in supervising children’s education from a distance and other household tasks, plus accomplishing their career from home. All these tasks have doubled due to the family’s long stay at home during the pandemic.
This great and distinguished contribution by women has found appreciation, praise, and satisfaction from everyone, whether inside or outside the family. The husband has become more aware of the great and difficult tasks that the wife performs, and that what she does needs high capabilities and knowledge of many arts, the first of which is the art of success in the husband’s participation in family management, especially in an unprecedented circumstance in terms of ensuring that none of the family members are affected by COVID-19, and the psychological effects that accompany it on everyone, or the difficult economic conditions, which increases the need for good management of financial resources.
