It was the most heart-wrenching conversation. A middle-aged woman, with five children, told me how she had to starve as the assistance from the government was channelled to her husband who is the head of the family.
The snag here is that they are separated. And the husband didn’t fork out any money from the RM1600 received for the family. Not even for his kids.
So, it’s again the familiar story of women bearing the brunt of it all.
A recent Unicef and the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA)report titled “Families on the Edge” proves just that.
It revealed that women and children are the most vulnerable, where their lives are negatively impacted due to Covid-19.
And female-led households are more likely to suffer from unemployment and loss in income.
Other findings are equally worrying and shocking:
- About 32% of female heads of households have become unemployed since March while 57% have no access to social protection.
- Total monthly median earnings of the female heads of households in low-income group have dropped by almost 1/3 to RM675 compared to RM1,000 in 2019.
- Only 5 in 100 female head of households have enough savings to last more than 3 months.
Government did introduce few social assistance programmes in Prihatin and PENJANA stimulus package to ease Rakyat’s burden and safeguard their livelihoods.
But, the one-off cash handouts are inadequate to help them sail through hardships, especially for female heads of households who were retrenched and barely could cope with the pandemic because of low savings.
Two in five children in such households have insufficient equipment for e-learning and the report also indicates that mental health issues are more prevalent in female-headed households.
I would like to echo the concerns of many world leaders who have warned that women and children must not be overlooked as the world responds to the greatest health crisis of the century.
They are the most vulnerable and continue to suffer devastating losses globally due to the pandemic.
And so, the Malaysian government needs to be critical in enhancing and expanding social protection for women and children, first as a stop-gap measure, and then expand it as an investment for human capital development.
These social protection programmes must specifically focus on closing gender livelihood gaps and increasing food security in women-headed households.