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Invisible Frontline Warriors of COVID-19: An Intersectional Feminist Study of ASHA Workers in India

Manorama Upadhyaya (Mahila P.G. Mahavidyalaya, India)

Systemic Inequality, Sustainability and COVID-19

ISBN: 978-1-80117-733-7, eISBN: 978-1-80117-732-0

Publication date: 30 May 2022

Abstract

Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) are community health workers under the National Rural Health Mission of Government of India (NRHM). They have played a pivotal role during the COVID-19 pandemic in providing information and healthcare services to and from the remotest part of a village in India, working round the clock tracing patients and providing other COVID-19 related services along with fulfilling their basic duties of anti-natal care, immunization, sanitization, etc. The chapter seeks to understand the causative factors of invisibility and marginalization of ASHA workers. As most of them come from low-income and low-literacy background, they face discrimination and marginalization with long working hours, very low wages, and being treated as social pariah by the community they work in and work for. The study is particularly relevant because ASHA workers have worked as a communicating link between doctors, hospitals, and communities, and also through door-to-door survey, they have collected massive data during the pandemic, which has helped the governments to frame policies and take decisions. Both qualitative and quantitative methods have been used. I have interviewed some 55 ASHA workers (some of being my former students). I have used news clippings and government reports, regulations, directives and guidelines, survey reports of Thomas Reuters foundation, Amnesty International, Aziz Premji Foundation, as source material for information. There are certain gaps in policy making, social behavior, and attitude toward the ASHA workers, which need to be addressed.

Keywords

Citation

Upadhyaya, M. (2022), "Invisible Frontline Warriors of COVID-19: An Intersectional Feminist Study of ASHA Workers in India", Aladuwaka, S., Wejnert, B. and Alagan, R. (Ed.) Systemic Inequality, Sustainability and COVID-19 (Research in Political Sociology, Vol. 29), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 61-74. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0895-993520220000029008

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022 Manorama Upadhyaya. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited