Abstract:

This research aimed to learn the socio-economic conditions of domestic workers working as daily women during the pandemic period. To learn the experiences of domestic workers, which is shaped within the framework of patriarchal capitalism and in informal sector, in pandemic 101 women from 10 different cities of Turkey (mainly Ankara, İstanbul and Konya) were reached. In addition to socio-demographic questions, a questionnaire including questions about their work and family life before and during the pandemic was administered to the participants by telephone interview. The results show that the majority of the participants are married, have at least two children, have a low level of education and belong to the working poor class. The results indicate that the pandemic caused job loss or revenue loss in the majority of the participants, while their household incomes decreased, their domestic expenses and debts increased, they could not eat healthy and the pandemic increased the family prpblems and the domestic workload of women. It is found that that a large part of the participants are working without social security and they form a risk group who can not comply with virus precautions due to reasons such as working without social security, their working place as someone else’s home, their need to use public transportation and having diseases caused by their profession. Another prominent result of the research is that some of the participants stated that they were exposed to sexual, verbal and economic violence at least once during their professional life. In line with these results, the main suggestions were to increase the advocacy work and academic activities to be carried out with women in order to ensure women's social security and women's access to their rights, especially their working rights.

Keywords: