All of us know, COVID 19 has created pandemic situation in the world. People are not going out of homes to work or for shopping, stopped visiting relatives and friends, maintaining social distance and conducting virtual office. In this situation, there are number of noticeable social impact experiencing in the society especially in Bangladesh and that can be relevant to other situations as well.

Sharing COVID 19 information on preventive measures are not women friendly. The way the message is broadcasted through television, new papers and using loud speaker at the market places not necessarily reaching the women effectively. Women in rural areas do not have access to newspapers;poor women do not get scope to watch television (they do not have it) so that they are dependent on men to get information. The way men narrate the information (specially the illiterate men) with their spouses is a question to understand how much it is effective to control Corona virus transmission and the role women can play. One to one communication with illiterate women could have better results but there is no such provision.

Women headed poor households those live on daily income are in sever condition. They do not have scope to earn from any other sources; neither can go out to look for jobs because all the activities outside homes are completely stopped. Men can borrow money from their friends but for poor women it is really a challenge. Micro finance institutions stopped lending so that sources of borrowing and earning for women bread winners are completely shut down. In this situation, food support activities targeting poor women headed households should be prioritized.

Staying at home has increased work load of women. The male members those usually go out to work are now at home. They ask women for tea, serve food on time, washing clothes, taking care of elderly and started finding faults of their spouses such as why these items are here, why the spouses didn’t clean the floor and raising unnecessary issues.

In oppose to that, during this period, men can learn what types of situation women face when they are always at home. A number of men talked to me over phone, within these four days at home it seems they are in jail. If it is, they should understand the situation of women those are everyday at home, having no scope to go out.

This is an opportunity for men to realize the workload of women at home, can support their partners through sharing activities to carry out household works rather than using more time on supervising their wife’s activities. We expect men should continue practice of sharing activities even after pandemic situation. This will help to improve family relation, at the same time children will learn importance of sharing household works between men and women.

Another challenge is that, those are expecting mothers having trouble to get medical services because the doctors shutdown their private chambers, private hospitals and those are available dealing with COVID 19 and providing services to other patients in limited scale. This is true for men those are suffering from other diseases and not getting access to medical services. We need to realize that, at this moment people do not suffer only from COVID 19, people need services for other diseases.

We all are talking about economic losses forecasting negative growth of GDP at the country level and globally. But it seems COVID 19 contributing to individualistic thinking in traditional societies like Bangladesh. If the situation get longer what would be the scenario of social bonding, will they become loose, what type of impact it will have on social live? Will this endemic contributes to a new shape of social order? These are big questions for the social scientists to answer.

There are some ecological positive impacts of COVID 19 as well. Due to closer of factories, feweruses of vehicles, stopping brick burning works, no flights, and no movement of people and many more activities responsible for carbon emission has contributed in less pollution. It is reported that air quality of Dhaka city is getting better, dust on the road is exceptionally less and the sky is clear now.

- Rokeya Kabir