When the pandemic arrived in March 2020, "we no longer had any money coming in", explains Yolanda Chambi, a 45-year-old trader who sold and rented traditional Andean costumes in the city of Puno (south) , on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

As she could no longer pay the rent for her house-workshop, Yolanda had no choice, faced with the fall in tourism, but to lower the curtain and move in with relatives in the countryside, with her four children. .

While unemployment benefits were paid in several Latin American countries in 2020 and 2021, in Peru the vast majority of the salaried sector is informal (70%).

This has reduced the number of beneficiaries, especially since the poorest categories do not have bank accounts.

The cancellation of the Virgin of Candlemas festival on Lake Titicaca for two consecutive years due to the pandemic has forced Yolanda Chambi to move to the countryside with her four children and grow food to survive Carlos MAMANI AFP

This year again, on February 2, Yolanda Chambi saw the Feast of the Virgin, a Catholic celebration where she sells or rents many costumes, suspended once again due to the pandemic.

"My activity is still stopped, I have no income," she laments.

With the help of her children, she now sells breakfasts at a crossroads, 30 km from the shores of Lake Titicaca.

A decade back

After two years of the pandemic, the employment situation of women in Latin America and the Caribbean is "compared to men proportionally more unfavorable than in 2019", underlined the International Labor Organization (ILO) in a report published in February.

Since 2020, female unemployment in the region is still hovering above 12%, compared to a general rate of 9.7%.

"Latin America had made progress (...) in reducing the gaps" between men and women but "the pandemic has brought the indicators back to levels of 10 years ago", he told AFP the ILO's Andean country officer, Italo Cardona.

According to him, the pandemic has affected many sectors that traditionally employ women: service delivery, hospitality, tourism and informal trade.

Millions of Latin American women have had no choice but to devote themselves to the "unpaid care" of their families, especially in Peru, which has the highest death rate from Covid-19 in the world.

Costume designer Yolanda Chambi shows the potatoes she grows to survive in Puno, Peru after losing her job due to the pandemic Carlos MAMANI AFP/Archives

And today, "their return to the labor market is much slower than that of men", underlines Mr. Cardona.

This is the case of Daysi Falcon, 34, who worked as an administrative assistant in a factory in Lima.

After the closure of the business due to the pandemic, the members of his family "one by one fell ill with Covid-19".

"I had to take care of each member of my family from March to August (2021)," says the 30-year-old, still unemployed.

According to the ILO, 24 million women have lost their jobs due to the pandemic in Latin America and just over four million remain out of work.

A similar number of men lost their jobs in the region, but only half a million remain unemployed today.

Resignation

For Silvia Muñoz, 65, the pandemic has become synonymous with lower wages, she says in her modest home in Villa Maria del Triunfo, a working-class suburb of Lima.

The sexagenarian, who has to support her sick husband, was recently able to resume her work as a domestic worker four days a week.

But his salary fell from $25 to $17.5 a day, a drop of 30%.

Daysi Falcon, a 34-year-old former administrative assistant who lost her job during the pandemic, poses with her children at her home in Independencia neighborhood, a suburb of Lima, Peru Ernesto BENAVIDES AFP

“I have to accept it, because maybe there is someone else below me who earns less,” she says with resignation, saying to herself “helpless”.

© 2022 AFP