 The contribution of working women in India to the social and economic growth is immense. Amid the period of novel coronavirus and the lockdown, majority of the women workers have been affected. Notably, Tamil Nadu has been in the top in terms of number of working women. We will look into how working women have been affected these days. It is a difficult situation and we are struggling to get food. We are not earning anything and even our employers are not helping us in any way. Rs 1000 is not enough for us. Government should consider us and our livelihood. I am working in Sipkat. Last month, I had worked for 20 days and was given Rs 7000 as my salary. But I can't run my family with that salary. This month, I haven't gotten my salary. This novel coronavirus is torturing us and we don't know what to do. The situation that we are having today is almost like we are going to be talking of before coronavirus and after coronavirus. So, in that kind of situation, how were women workers before? Now after coronavirus, how are women now? Before the coronavirus pandemic came and our country was responding to it. Women did not have much support but they were going out to work. They had a job. They did not have time to think. Because as you know, in India, women are working for more than 5 hours only in unpaid care work. The difference between men and women in unpaid care work is huge. Men are working only for 52 minutes in a day for unpaid care work whereas women are working for 5 hours. So, even though the stress on them for more work with their families is also going out to work for a wage, the burden on women has always been more. And they have basically more than double burden. That is the home and work. But they also have other burdens which are caused because of their low cost status, because of their stigma at the workplace that they don't like to say, oh I am working as a well-eccarii or domestic worker. Or even a garment factory worker for that matter. There is a stigma attached that they may be having a relationship outside. So, their personal life is embedded and meshed into this. And the burdens of work were always there. So now, after Corona, what happened? The crisis is that the women lost their jobs. They have no income. Even the domestic worker, the woman worker who is selling her some vegetables in the market place selling, let us say, some small, small things in the local market or fish or whatever they are doing to make a small living. They have all lost their jobs. Actually, after Corona, will they be able to recover that? We know for a fact that the government of India made a blanket lockdown. That means no fishing, no agriculture, no transport, no domestic work, no services. Everything is shut down. This is completely unprecedented. That means 130 crore people are supposed to not do anything. Now, when they don't do anything, how do they feed themselves? Can a country which has so many people who are not even paid minimum wage, who have no security, who have no savings, we just ask to sit at home. We have seasonal employment in India. As far as this unemployment sector is concerned, most of these women depend when you take of agriculture, when you take of fishery. These are important sectors where women contribute hugely to the unorganized sector. If you take up agriculture, about 48% of the women contribute to the actual agriculture work, whereas they hold only less than 2% of the land itself. The same goes on fisheries also. The whole of fishery industry itself is basically, you can say that women are the forefront of the fishing community itself. Even though the fishing community is basically done or hunted or done by the men, the whole of the economy of it, the whole of industry, distribution of it was majorly carried out by the women who do not contribute mostly on the bigger large scale industry, but who do contribute immensely through the small scale industry where they do go on to selling and etc. chain of the work in the fishing community. The applied of their domestic workers, this is another contribution of women. Domestic workers is nothing but women going on domestic health from one house to another. Majority of the Indian household have huge number of women working on the domestic workers category. And there is no clarity on records of the number of women and the amount of time, work time that they put, but the very larger or lesser amount of profit that they do take about, it's a huge exploitation of work. The same goes on for construction workers also. There are very lesser unionized facilities available for both domestic workers and also construction workers, but the majority of the women do not have access or do not have knowledge that there is an option of being unionized even for the domestic workers or the construction workers also. And I am employed in a private company. I have been working from home for the past two months and still haven't gotten my salary. Government hasn't announced anything about women's wage issues. I am earning Rs. 12,000 per month and I am supposed to get Rs. 24,000 for these two months. As a result, I am unable to pay my rent and can't afford to buy groceries for my home as well. The government has to announce something for women too. We don't know when the lockdown is coming to an end. If it is continuous to extended, it will only mean that we don't know get salary for the next few months. People are dying due to anger more than coronavirus. Even in my home is the same situation as my father is an outdoor driver and is unable to do his work. I am the stole Britwinner of my family and we are totally dependent on this salary. What they are now saying is there will not be any salary that will be given in the near future. So what is the government to say for this? The big question is that who is going to take care of it? The government made a proclamation immediately after corona lockdown was announced that all employers must be wages, the full wage and that house owners should not take rent. More than 90% of our urban dwellers like in Chennai are in rented houses. Only about 10% are actually in their own house. Now to tell a person not to pay rent. That means you are telling the house owner you give up your rent. But the house owner may also require the rent for the education of his own children or that house owner might be an old lady whose only income is the rent. So I do not think it is fair for the government to make a blanket such a statement. It is not like all house owners are rich people and having 20 houses. Now I am saying that this blanket ban on work, on transport, on social services is completely lacking in any vision of any society. It means that the persons do not actually know what is a social structure. What keeps the wheels of a social structure. Because some parts of the social structure would have kept moving. For instance working on a farm. They are automatically working on a farm. There are spaces where you can have 2 meters or 1 meter space transporting the commodities. So there could have been certain occupations which could have been continued and the entire lockdown was not well thought out. So after Corona we see unemployment. We see our people without food. We see severe hunger where people are depending on only rice kanji. The mothers are eating much less because their husband and children are not getting enough food. In many areas in Chennai city, I am not even talking of the village and rural areas. In Chennai city itself I am getting calls saying that we are eating only 1 meal a day. Thank you.