, Lesotho’s clothing industry is the country’s largest private employer, and more than 80% of its workers are women, according to government officials. Most, like Sesha, are the first women in their families to earn a paycheck, a quiet gender revolution built on T-shirts and tracksuits.on how the pandemic is impacting women in Africa, most acutely in the least developed countries.
Like most of the women in jobs like hers, Kheoane grew up at a time when Lesotho had a different export: the labor of its men. For decades, they left the country by the tens of thousands to work in the gold, diamond and platinum mines of South Africa. The paychecks they sent to their families back home were Lesotho’s largest source of foreign income.
“When you speak about this industry being devastated by the pandemic, it isn’t just the workers themselves,” said Mokhele, the union leader. “It’s everyone around them, too.” By the following year, workers were desperate. In May 2021, local unions organized a strike to try to raise the garment sector’s monthly minimum wage — then 2,100 loti . The demonstrations turned violent, with security forces fatally shooting a garment worker.
As Kheoane worked, her son, Bokang, stayed in Ha Ramokhele with her mother. At 11, he’d spent months out of school during the pandemic, and Kheoane worried he’d fall behind.
The new coronavirus affects so many things,