Overview of Africa
4. Work- Life Balance
One dimension of evaluating decent work is securing significant time for family and leisure (Ghoneim, 2021; Nam & Kim, 2019). Decent work implies a working atmosphere that facilitate work- life balance; ensuring family time, leisure time and self- time. Hjálmsdóttir and Bjarnadóttir (2021) have defined Work- life balance as a situation in which worker are able to manage family and work obligations simultaneously; respectively gain better mental and physical health.
COVID- 19 has encouraged remote working and working at home. However, this did not contribute to less tension or more life balance. During the pandemic, especially the lockdown time, parents were overwhelmed with several tasks (Hjálmsdóttir & Bjarnadóttir, 2021). Since our houses turned into working places, backyard, clubs and schools, parents acted as workers, coaches, friends and teachers. With working from home, parents were not able to separate working
73 COVID-19 Impact on Decent Work: Overview of Africa
time from family time and personal life time (Irawanto et al., 2021). Moreover, teleworking or remote working made it adjusted for employer to reach employee at any time regardless of weekends or official holiday. Parents gained flexibility with working from home but paid price less life balance. Mostafa (2021) showed based on structured interviews held in Egypt that employees would stay longer hours working during remote working in comparison to office hours. The same was supported by Workers can often overwork themselves.
Moreover, COVID- 19 lockdown had crashed leisure industry. With restricted access to beaches and gardens, closed clubs and fitness centers, banning travel and limited social visits, people had no choice but to move into more online meetings and online entertainment (Amin et al., 2022; Young, 2020). Being house bounded and with limited leisure activities, online games became a preferred activity. Online games have been a method to escape reality and socialize at a time where socialization is prohibited (Zhu, 2021). Communications’ application and smart phones expanded the dependence on online activities for leisure and work break.
Harding and Noorbhai (2021) analysis of a sample in South Africa during the Pandemic, showed that more than 40 % of the sample play video games in the pandemic on daily basis and more than 69 % of the population would spend three hours a day playing. Harding and Noorbhai (2021) added that nearly 69.1 % of the population would prefer being seated rather than active games.
5. Conclusion
COVID- 19 did not infect all human on earth but for certain affected the life of all human. It reshaped our consumption habits, gatherings, working environment and learning systems. If one is not affected of either these conditions, he would be affected by the economic slowdown accompanied the social distaining procedures set by all governorates. In this paper, the unemployment in Africa accompanying the decrease in economic growth was highlighted. The paper also, shed the light on the changes in youth, informal sector, female unemployment and work- life balance. Many questions are raised post- COVID- 19 concerning decent work, how fast will African economies recap, how can tourism be backed up from shocks, how can worker benefit from the tele- communication expansion and will remote working last.
Hebatallah Ghoneim 74
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