Lockdown & me …!! Reflections of working women during the lockdown in Vadodara, Gujarat-Western India

Abstract

This qualitative study reminisces about the experiences of working women in Vadodara during the lockdown from April to May 2020. It articulates their voices of how they understood themselves during the lockdown and relates their ongoing internal dialogue to the larger conversation on what it means to be a woman in the feminist, gender studies, and in the sociology of work literature. Indian women operate within an intersectional space between Western individualism and persistent patriarchal traditional gendered roles. Their sense of who and what they are, arises through their performative acts of their many roles as daughters, wives, mothers, and daughters-in-law. Therefore, their context becomes essential in understanding their lived experiences. Every woman in this study played multifaceted roles during the lockdown, which was not acknowledged by others around them thereby making them feel undervalued. The existential question of who and what am I, which was always in the background, now screamed in their mind. Loneliness and emotional turmoil grew in them, as the interactions within and beyond the house became indifferent, infrequent, and recreative opportunities receded. Work and childcare pressures were harsh on their time and emotions. The fear of getting infected in an earmarked COVID-19 hotspot was real and frightening. Hence, they well and truly became locked down!.