Systemic Inequality, Sustainability and COVID-19: Volume 29

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted every community across the globe, but the global COVID-19 data show that the United States remains the most affected country where well over 666,000 people died, and approximately 40 million citizens became ill due to the virus' spread by mid-2021 (CDC, 2021). It is also noteworthy that extreme racial disparities in rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths are high in the United States, specifically among African American population. This situation is particularly evident among African American population in Alabama's Black Belt. Subsequently, COVID-19, racial disparities, and health inequalities have become central to the national and regional conversation. This chapter examines the associations between COVID-19, social determinants of health, and the systematic health disparity in African American population in Alabama's Black Belt region using Geographic Information Systems and the concept of uneven spatial development. Understanding the relationship between COVID-19 and these disparities within a spatial context vital to developing pathways to overcome the pandemic's effects and combat the systemic discrimination in this region. The derived policy recommendation could apply to other regions experiencing social inequality and health disparity.

Prior to the mandate young adults wore masks 42.7% (n = 565) of the time and elderly adults wore masks 81.4% (n = 129) of the time. Also, 56.7% (n = 979) of females and 48.2% (n = 678) of males wore masks. Whereas almost all the observed participants (95.9%, n = 73) who appeared of Asian descent wore masks, individuals perceived as White were far less likely to wear masks with only 47.2% (n = 1,089) wearing masks, and 62.6% (n = 401) of perceived Black individuals wearing masks. After the mask mandate was issued 91.7% (n = 109) of those observed were wearing masks. Mask wearing declined shortly after the CDC guidelines changed to indicate that fully vaccinated people did not need to wear masks indoors.

Understanding demographic differences in mask wearing and responses to policy changes are important for public policy and public health.

This chapter is one of a few that include observational data of actual mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2021.

Discrimination against the elderly people is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon. Despite the obvious fact of the aging of societies, everlasting youth, fitness, and thus usefulness of a person are promoted. Discrimination also extends to the field of healthcare. It can be concluded that a sick and weak person is more exposed to it. Manifestations of such behaviors are regulations that do not give equal rights to all age groups and limit access to selected services for the elderly people. Such actions also include the attitudes of the medical staff, which, often imbued with stereotypes about old age, approaches the elderly patient with disregard.

The aim of this chapter is to show the problem of discrimination against elderly patients in the Polish healthcare system, and to indicate possible measures to improve the situation of such people. An attempt will also be made to answer the question about the causes of discriminatory behavior. On the one hand, it is connected with the attitude of the medical personnel, who often treat such patients with superiority. On the other hand, the cause of limited access to some treatments and medical procedures are systemic solutions. Systemic solutions cause that such patients have limited access to some treatments and medical procedures. It is important to consider how these two issues are related. Do social attitudes, stereotypes, influence regulations, or regulations limiting the rights of the elderly cause a change in the reactions of medical staff? To answer this question, an appropriate solution can be proposed. Should the actions fighting discrimination be actions aimed at changing legal regulations or should the burden be shifted to education and social campaigns?

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.

The impact of COVID-19 has been sector-specific as per relaxations allowed under different lockdown announcements by the Indian Government. Sectors with high potential threats of spreading COVID-19 cases have been allowed restricted operations. Depending on the degree of operationalization as per government orders, employment prospects have widened after the complete lockdown period has elapsed. The Government of Himachal Pradesh had rolled out the skill register (https://skillregister.hp.gov.in/) to capture the impact of COVID-19 in the month of July 2020. There are around 16,243 people who have registered themselves on this portal till February 2021 and have shown interest in employment opportunities. To understand the current employment situations among the respondents and job needs, a skill study was conducted from November 2020 to February 2021. Seventy-five percent of these registrations are from four districts of Himachal Pradesh namely Kangra, Hamirpur, Mandi, and Una. Data was collected from 550 respondents by using the simple random sampling method. The study highlights that around 56% of respondents registered in the skill portal had lost jobs due to COVID-19 lockdown.

Respondents shared that the skill mission of Himachal Pradesh made substantial efforts and around 47% of the respondents were connected to the various opportunities available in industries within Himachal Pradesh. Out of these, relevant industrial units had contacted around 13% of respondents and only one respondent out of 550 respondents had joined the job. Low salary, lack of jobs in the preferred area, the mismatch between required qualifications and experiences, risk of transmission of COVID-19, etc., remained as major reasons for the refusal of jobs by the respondents. The result highlights that the parameters like relevant experiences, pre COVID -19 salary, education level, technical skills, urgency of job are some of the potential factors which are considered by the respondents to return to the industry.

In Sri Lanka women make up the majority of the country's population. However, there is a concern that many women are subjected to any form of violence at home which is known as family violence, or in Sri Lanka which is identified as domestic violence. As such domestic violence is one of the topics that have gained attention in Sri Lanka under the major topic of gender-based violence (GBV). Sri Lanka also imposed prolonged lockdowns, travel/mobility restrictions, social distancing, and other health measures/restrictions to control the speedy spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a consequence, the life of women was unfavorably impacted. A increase in the number of domestic violence cases against women during public emergencies – here referred to COVID-19 – is one of such negative impacts. Therefore, this study intends to examine the adequacy of the existing laws of prevention of domestic violence in Sri Lanka and investigate the appropriateness of the available judicial mechanism including its preparedness in achieving the proper protection support for the women victims of domestic violence during public emergencies. To reach that goal this doctrinal research study heavily engages in a descriptive and detailed analysis of legal rules found in primary sources such as domestic statutes, international treaties, statistics, government circulars and regulations and case law, etc., in respect of the issue of domestic violence against women during public emergencies with specific reference to Sri Lanka. Secondary resources such as print and electronic text material are also utilized in the completion of this study.

The implementation of internal committee (IC) in three different institutions of Coimbatore district, Tamil Nadu, one Government institution and two private institutions are discussed throughout the study. The author looks at the perpetuation of gender discriminatory practices among the members of the committees. The dynamics and constitution of IC in Government and private offices are examined. It looks at the implementation of the IC through case studies done in private and Government offices in Coimbatore district. It also highlights the prevailing gaps in the IC constitution and implementation by the employees in the organizations. The response to sexual harassment in working place is not recognized because of patriarchal nature of the working environment. The chapter is concluded with the findings that men and women employees remain unaware of the provisions of the act and the employees are hesitant to register complaints in the working environment. The act places the responsibility on the employer to form an IC to function as a Redressal forum for working women. The Sexual Harassment Act 2013 mandates the constitution of IC committee by employer in the institution having more than 10 employees. The sexual harassment act 2013 has completed eight years and the implementation part is still challenging. So the current research was undertaken to study the challenges involved in the effective implementation of the complaints committee. Hence it is suggested to conduct a series of awareness programs about the IC powers and functions among employees at regular intervals in the institutions.

The work of caring has assumed utmost importance during the devastation caused by the pandemic. We employ the feminist theory of care ethics within the context of food provisioning during the pandemic, and examine the work of Food for Chennai, a group of micro-volunteers in the city of Chennai, India who provide home-cooked meals, free of charge, to COVID-19 patients and households that are in quarantine. Using textual and visual data from social media posts (Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram), interviews with an organizer of the movement, and print – media articles, we trace the evolution of this movement, and argue that this network of care could not have developed or grown without the use of digital infrastructure and the affective campaigning that it enables. We add to the scholarship of three linked bodies of work – digital activism, food ethics, and the ethics of care – by grounding our analysis in the immediacy of the crisis and suggesting avenues for thinking about ethical issues and digital activism as crisis response in the future. We conclude by offering ways of reimagining food systems that could embrace values of care in the post-pandemic world.

This study uses a phenomenology method to investigate the experiences of married Muslim women while having romantic conversations via online dating sites during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sixteen participants were selected via purposive sampling, and the data were gathered through semi-structured interviews. The results confirm that resistance to Islamic marriage limitations is the underlying reason accounting for Muslim women's romantic chat. However, “premarital experiences in virtual space” and “chat as a remedy for loneliness” create the causal conditions of romantic chat, and “experience of family restrictions” and a “sense of freedom” provides the foundation for an online romantic chat. It is worth noting that those who voice a sense of “unhappy marriage” and “husband's sexual coldness” are more likely to turn to sex chat during the COVID-19 pandemic. The consequences of digital romantic conversations for married Muslim women are “chat addiction” and “feeling a sense of betrayal.”

The overexploitation of resources has led to drastic negative impacts on biodiversity such as an overall increasing amount of infertile soil and overgrazed land. Environmentalists have been noticing now more than ever that plants and trees around the world have seen their population numbers severely drop over the last century. Many species including enormous flocks of birds congregating in marshes, herds of Wildebeest, Zebra and Tomson's Gazelle, along with untamed Tigers, Elephants, Giraffes, and Rhinos, grazing the vast natural landscape of the African plains that make their natural homes are at major risk of becoming extinct. With many pressures on world ecosystems already impacting the environment, continuous growth and natural human development trajectory is one that we must find a way to reconcile with environmental sustainability. The best way to do so is by establishing sustainability through the preservation of biodiversity and the ecosystem services different aspects of biodiversity provide. Although sustainability and biodiversity are crucial to assuring a clean future for our planet, the COVID-19 Pandemic has had a negative effect on the needs for biodiversity research, protection, and policymaking. This chapter looks at two main examples of biodiversity loss (1) the Tragedy of the Commons and (2) Deforestation to provide potential policy solutions to combat impacts of the Tragedy of the Commons and Deforestation, especially while considering implications of the current COVID-19 pandemic on biodiversity supportive policies.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the invisible incarcerated women population who are convicted of a crime and serving a sentence in a residential correctional facility in the United States (US). Even though correctional populations have been declining in the past years, the extent of mass incarceration has been a significant public health concern even before the pandemic. Moreover, the global spread of COVID-19 continues to have devastating effects in all the world's societies, and it has exacerbated existing social inequalities within the US carceral complex.

We base our findings on data collection from two comparative clinical sociological garden interventions in a large Southeastern women's prison and a Midwestern residential community correctional facility for women. Both are residential correctional facilities for residents convicted of a crime. In contrast, in prison, women are serving longer-term sentences, and in the community corrections facility, women typically are housed for six months. We have developed and carried out educational garden programming and related research on both sites over the past two years and observe more closely the impact of COVID-19 on incarcerated women and their communities, which has aggravated the invisibility and marginalization of incarcerated women who suffered a lack of programming and insufficient research attention already before the pandemic.

We argue that prison gardens' educational programming has provided some respite from the hardships of the pandemic and is a promising avenue of correctional rehabilitation and programming that fosters sustainability, healthier nutrition, and mental health among participants.

Residential correctional facilities are distinctively sited to advance health equity and community health within a framework of sustainability, especially during a pandemic. We focus on two residential settings for convicted women serving a sentence in a prison or a residential community corrections facility that offers rehabilitation and educational programming. Women are an underserved population within the US carceral system, and it is thus essential to develop more programming and research for their benefit.

This chapter is a comprehensive description and in-depth analysis of the current COVID-19 pandemic and political crisis in Chile. It provides a structural analysis of the Chilean economy and discusses how Chileans in different social strata are coping with both COVID-19 and the social revolution. This is a historical case study of Chilean society and its experience with a simultaneous pandemic and transformative social change. As the analysis show, Chile is known as one of the most economically developed and, until recently, most politically stable countries in Latin America. It is also known for the high quality and wide coverage of its healthcare, mental health services, and preventative programs. Nevertheless, with COVID-19, it is experiencing its worst pandemic in 100 years. This nation, which has a population of about 19 million, has reported over 1.5 million cases of COVID-19 and greater than 30,000 deaths (Chuaqui & Linn, 2016/2019). It has recently ranked among the top 10 countries in the world in COVID-19 related deaths per 100,000 residents. The first case of COVID-19 was reported in March 2020 in the midst of a profound social revolution that was ongoing from October of the previous year. The rapid social, economic, and political changes that have occurred with both the social revolution (estallido) and the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in disproportionately experienced unemployment, isolation, illness, and death and have produced in many “middle” and lower class Chileans an anomic crisis that includes anxiety and depression because of the uncertainty about the future. This analysis provides insights for interpreting the outcomes of the recent national election of delegates to the upcoming Constitutional convention and the potential reforms that will be proposed for the new Constitution to address long-standing social and economic inequity in Chile.

This chapter argues that sustainable development must be anchored on a human rights regime and that an integrated framing of human rights and sustainability in development policy and practice is crucial in the achievement of the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Using data gathered from the author's field research during her US Fulbright Fellowship in the Philippines in 2017, the chapter examines the impacts of corporate mining on the Philippine Indigenous people using the United Nations Declaration on the Human Rights of Indigenous People as a framework for analysis. The experience of the indigenous people shows that large scale corporate mining – largely dominated by transnational corporations – threatens their right to life, right to ancestral land, right to a healthy environment, right to education and cultural rights, right to self-determination, and the right to sustainable development. The violation of these rights threatens the Indigenous people's survival and makes their situation even more precarious during COVID-19 pandemic. State and corporate recognition of these rights is crucial to building resiliency to the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic and the survival of the indigenous people.

In my article, I put forward the thesis that today's consumer attitudes promoted and practiced as the pursuit of sustainable development have their genealogy in the everyday life of Polish women and their savings and inventiveness resulting from living conditions in a socialist state. Polish women's life stories under communism, which I conducted as a part of international research project, contain a kind of instructions on how to use modest resources frugally, inventively, and creatively to ensure a decent life for yourself and your family. What's more, many resource-saving practices developed by our generational grandmothers and mothers are experiencing a renaissance, such as the production of organic food at home or the re-circulation and remaking of second-hand clothes. So, when it comes to sustainable development, old everyday practices of saving resources through their ingenious and creative use are returning to favor. With the awareness of contemporary civilization threats, their usefulness may once again turn out to be salutary for humanity.

The chapter tries to understand how nuclear tests and the radiation fallouts in their aftermath can lead to cancer. It seeks to explore how our diseased ecological systems have resulted in silencing the birdsong and the spreading of cancer in the Anthropocene with reference to Terry Tempest Williams' (An environmentalist and Utah naturalist) two memoirs – “‘Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place” and “When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice.” It would also try to factor in connections between climate change, pandemics like the COVID-19, and the onslaught of other terminal illnesses like cancer, all a result of mankind's anthropocentric hubris and domination of nature.

Mine would be a qualitative approach wherein I will refer to the original two texts mentioned for primary material and other sources for secondary references and analyze them from an ecofeminist perspective.

We need to establish the health of the Environment through reduced usage of nuclear weapons and by developing a language and an environmental praxis that doesn't separate the subject and the object and only then we can usher in biological egalitarianism, and restore the song of the whistling thrush again. We also need to revere our Mother Earth and see to it that she maintains her ecological balance through homeostasis.