A United Nations agency report published on Tuesday has said that in the already unequal region of Latin America, women, indigenous people, those of African descent, and migrants will be amongst those worst hit by the economic crisis caused by the pandemic.

Aside from being affected by the economic crisis alone, the disproportionate access to clean water, healthcare, housing, and overall hygiene could lead to the risk of higher rates of infection in these communities, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Although the majority of minority groups are at risk, it seems that women are particularly vulnerable. In Latin America, women’s work is generally informal and without guarantees, making them exposed to unemployment. 11.4% of employed women in the area are domestic workers, making the economic downturn much worse due to lack of access to any safety net of sorts.

Of these domestic workers, the majority are migrants, have some sort of indigenous heritage, or are of African descent. This adds a discriminatory factor to their overall situation, whether in the workplace, or regarding their access to proper resources needed to combat the pandemic.

Latin America has a history of a male chauvinist culture, meaning that women are also burdened with stress at home coming from responsibilities with their families. With schools closed, quarantine, and the very real risk of domestic violence, women are in an extremely stressful and even dangerous situation.

“The burden of unpaid domestic work assumed by women, adolescents and girls, as well as cases of violence against them, are significantly increased,” the agency warned.

Latin America currently has more than 369,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with around 20,000 deaths. The economies in the region are set to decrease by 5.3% in 2020, a record for economic crises in decades.

This crisis to come is likely going to intensify the existing discrimination against Indigenous and African-American communities. These populations already have large wage gaps when compared to other groups in the same region.

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