Covid-19 and the aggravation of social inequalities for Brazilian women in the labor market

Abstract

The present paper aims to analyze the consequences of Covid-19 for the labor market, especially considering Brazilian women in adverse socioeconomic conditions. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) notes that women were the most affected group since the pandemic outbreak, and it is known that social inequalities turn people more vulnerable and prone to risk situations in search of survival, such as human trafficking. In this sense, by means of descriptive research, this work studies how the pandemic affected job opportunities and market services for those women, and how the feminization of poverty in Brazil – increased by the pandemic – can cause impacts in the statistics related to trafficked women in the following years. As main conclusions, we point out that the pandemic brought a new paradigm, acting directly in the intensification of poverty conditions, contributing to the vulnerability of women as targets of trafficking.

Keywords

• Feminization of poverty post-Covid-19
• Labor market
• Trafficking in women