She lost her husband at the beginning of this year, leaving her with 4 children to take care of them, and last June she lost her source of income from her job in a private school;
Then, the English language teacher, Rania Al-Balawi, found herself without a husband to support her, and without a job to support her and help her with life's hardships.
Al-Balawi told Al-Jazeera Net, "The school I worked at for 5 years kept teachers, and dismissed most of the teachers, citing the Corona pandemic and distance education. I explained to them my situation, and that there is no support for my family but me, but they refused to cooperate with me under the pretext of the school's bankruptcy."
I had to work in private tutoring, manufacturing household products from pickles and cheeses and selling them to secure living expenses, and I set up an exhibition of food products with the help of a number of girls in a suburb of Amman.
The condition of the teacher, Rania Al-Balawi, is not the only one among the Jordanian working women, as this 30-year-old Sumaya Al-Awad supports and takes care of her sick parents, and she was released from her work in business administration in a private hospital.
There, on the outskirts of the capital, Lutfia Al-Ashoush, forty years old, found herself released from work in a vegetable farm, and she became without financial income to support her family after her separation from her husband.
The percentage of female unemployment increased during the third quarter of this year to 33% (Al-Jazeera)
Double damage
The effects of the Corona pandemic negatively spread to various Jordanian economic sectors;
This led to the layoffs of employees from their work and the reduction of the salaries of others, but the harm done to working women from the Corona pandemic was more than the male workers, and the harm was greater and more severe for working women who head the family, and required them to spend on it.
The reasons why working women are more affected than men are due to several factors, according to experts;
The most important of which is that the largest proportion of women work in the unorganized sector, especially manufacturing and services, and thus it is easy to dispense with them, and 25% of women work in elementary occupations, which have limited income and difficult to implement remotely, which exposes them to losing their jobs as a result of their inability to work Direct because of the ban and the difficulty of moving.
In addition, about 40% of female workers have an average wage of 350 dinars ($ 500), which makes them vulnerable to financial crises, especially those who have bank loans or live in rented homes.
The unemployment rate among females showed an increase during the third quarter of this year, reaching 33%, compared to the second quarter of the same year, when it reached 28%, and the percentage of unemployed women who hold a university degree reached 77%, compared to 25% of the unemployed male university. According to the Department of Statistics (a governmental institution).
308 thousand families headed by women in Jordan and they bear the consequences of spending on them (Al-Jazeera)
Ministry of Labor numbers
In early April, the Jordanian Ministry of Labor launched an electronic platform to receive workers' complaints, whether they were laid off from their jobs or whose salaries were reduced, and the number of complaints received by the platform reached 65,000 complaints until the tenth of this month, both male and female.
The media spokesman for the ministry, Muhammad Al-Ziyoud, told Al-Jazeera Net that the complaints lodged against establishments that ended the work of their employees amounted to 4,040 complaints, and the number of male and female workers whose services were terminated reached 8,605 persons, 5,311 employees and employees of whom were returned to work according to defense orders, and 3071 had their services terminated according to the law.
He added that the Ministry has 1,232 complaints that are still pending before the specialists, and any institution that does not apply defense orders and violates the provisions of the Labor Law on its employees is referred to the judiciary, as 1092 complaints were referred to the judiciary.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Bishr Al-Khasawneh announced a program worth 320 million dinars ($ 451 million) to expand social protection for families and individuals, help bear and sustain the wages of workers in the private sector, and the sustainability of enterprises in the private sector affected by the Corona pandemic.
Workers who learn professions that were the preserve of men, such as repairing cars to face life's difficulties (Al-Jazeera)
Harmful women workers
The labor expert, Ahmed Awad, said that working women have suffered extensive harm due to the actions of the employers, especially that working conditions are difficult and expelling women.
Reducing workers ’wages pushed many workers to leave their jobs, in addition to the difficulty of moving around during the ban days, and the remote education system and the closure of nurseries pushed workers to leave their jobs and take care of children and the concerns of the household.
Awad added to Al-Jazeera Net that women who head families have been subjected to greater difficulties and damages after being laid off from their jobs and reduced wages, which reveals the fragility of the labor market and the lack of social protection requirements.
According to the Department of Statistics, the percentage of households headed by women increased to 14%, as they head 308,000 families out of 2.1 million families in Jordan, and women bear great responsibilities, which have increased their dismissal from their jobs and leaving them without a breadwinner.