Actor Chitrangda Singh believes it is important to focus on the mental health of women during the lockdown and the whole family needs to come together to help her.
The actor also urged women to not push themselves too hard to take care of their families.
“The mental health of the women in the family affects everyone and it’s important to encourage people to talk about it. People should absolutely not make women feel guilty about having any kind of issue or stress or anxiety.
“There is no bravery in fake toughness. We all are weak at times, and it’s good to make people feel that it is all okay and normal. I believe the very important step is to talk about it in the first place,” Chitrangda said in a statement.
She said everyone in the family needs to share the workload and take care of the mental well-being of each other. “It won’t be difficult if the workload of the family is distributed (between) all the members of the family. I suggest one could help by managing the daily chores or taking turns to help with the kitchen or the kids.
“Also, it is extremely important to find some time to talk to her (women at home) and know how she is managing or feeling physically and mentally,” she said.
The “Bazaar” actor said during the lockdown she is writing a script for a short movie and making Tik Tok videos for her fans. On the work front, she will be next seen in Sujoy Ghosh’s “Bob Biswas” alongside Abhishek Bachchan. The film produced by Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, will see Abhishek playing Biswas and it is said the movie will serve as spin-off to the 2012 thriller “Kahaani”.
Gender A critical determinant of mental health
In 2000, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Gender to be a critical determinant of mental health and mental illness. They said that “gender determines the differential power and control men and women have over the socioeconomic determinants of their mental health and lives”. Following the coronavirus outbreak, the Inter-agency Standing Committee (IASC) has also called for “gender-sensitive” deployment of healthcare, especially mental health.
Effect of Lockdown on Women
Workloads on women have increased due to lockdown and self-quarantine measures. More people being home-bound for a prolonged period means women have more tasks to accomplish at home.
Data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that Indian women do nearly six hours or unpaid care work each day. Indian men, on the other hand, spend less than an hour on an average doing the same.
Globally, women perform 76.2% of total hours of unpaid care work. According to UNESCO, 300 million children are missing school globally due to the current virus outbreak, increasing the responsibilities of women.