The Covid-19 pandemic is affecting all countries, destroying jobs, increasing poverty, and putting at risk the hard won gender equality gains of last few decades. The pandemic is not just a public health crisis; it is a social and economic crisis.  There is no doubt that the pandemic has accelerated economic stress among low income households and as a result women in these households are the worst hit and are under risk. COVID-19 has been particularly unkind to women, who have been the biggest sufferers of the impacts of lockdown as well as post lockdown, be it at work place or at home. Many of the broader repercussions of the pandemic are affecting them more severely.

The current crisis dis-proportionally impacts the women. There are various reasons behind this. First, women in developing countries are more likely to work in social sectors such as hospitality, retail, restaurants and tourism which require face to face interactions. These are the sectors being hit the hardest by social distancing brought as a precautionary measure in the wake of the pandemic. There are also concerns in many of the developing countries like women often work in informal sectors as domestic workers, street vendors and casual labourers. These informal sectors tend to be low skilled and low paid jobs and therefore have lesser job security and social protection which provide women with limited resources to adjust to this economic crisis. According to official statistics in April 2020, monthly unemployment rates rose sharply from 3.1 to 15.5 % for women.

India is already in bad shape in terms of female unemployment. Currently around 80% of women remain outside the workforce according to a recent study by Public affairs centre (PAC) report. It states that dynamics of family, social biases and patriarchal tilt in the culture are the main reasons behind it. More than 60% of employed women are in informal sector according to the data and opinions recorded in PAC study. Hence a substantial proportion of women working in informal sectors fighting social constraints lost their only source of income. They have now become more vulnerable to economic destitution. Many of the different dimensions in work in which COVID-19 is having greater impact on women are those which are at the heart of gender inequality. These include wages, educational gap, limited access to finance and workplace bias.

Secondly, women who generally carry the higher and wider burden of household work load are bearing most of the costs triggered by school closures and health risks posed to elderly family members. The pandemic has also caused an increased burden of caring for the older people and the children in the houses. Here also the balance has to be maintained by the women thanks to the  biased family values. The women are not expected to share this burden with anyone else, be it her spouse or the elders due to this very family bias. She cannot even delegate this duty to outsiders due to risk of infection with the virus. Single parents are facing the greatest challenge. Without access to enough paid leave many single parents had to quit their job to care for their children.  In case both husband and wife work full time, then question arises on how to split the childcare responsibilities. In this case usually the mother is expected to assume the responsibility of child care, thanks to the unshakable belief in patriarchy. Uncertainty about the reopening of schools and fear of the contagion for the most vulnerable section of children along with family expectations generally lead  to women exiting the labour force for a prolonged period of time, entailing long term costs to their careers.

Thirdly, the new normal of remote working is posing a challenge of integration into work area and there is issue of online safety. While urban area women still have access to some support, the poor migrants lurking on the margins of society have been the hardest hit by the pandemic. Many women migrant workers who were working at different locations from their daily wage earning husbands had to deal with the impact on their own safety as well as on the children which were under their responsibilities.

Limited digital connectivity and access to technology as well as poor IT skills are also affecting   women entrepreneurs and workers in developing economies like India, from fully making use of digital platforms to mitigate the adverse economic effect of pandemic.

The pandemic and the associated economic distress are at an early stage with a lot of uncertainties. It does not prevent one from anticipating certain potential negative fallouts. There needs to be actionable plans and preparations for such fallouts. Policy makers around the world are trying to focus on responding to the immediate crisis, fighting the devastating effect of pandemic on health care whist trying to keep the economies alive. The next step needs to be finding the tools to sustain economic growth, fight poverty and regain the lost grounds in gender equality and evolving a gender appropriate response that leaves no one behind. Increasing women participation in economic activity can be a part of the solution to post pandemic recovery. Digital technology offers great opportunities to women if they are properly trained in it. However it is important to put women in such positions where it would be possible for them to take advantages of opportunities. It needs to be understood that the responsibility of childcare is a shared role for both the parents. Post-Covid adjustments need to incorporate this in dealing with the pandemic’s impact on women in workforce.

In pre-Covid as well during Covid, the world has already been experiencing exacerbating pay and promotion gaps between men and women. If in post Covid times, women continue to lose their space from the workforce economic down turn will continue. As women have been found to add greater value to any organization in terms of emotional value, output, judicious use of resources and linkages with partners and stakeholders, lesser participation by them can spell disaster for an already mangled world economy. This can have massive repercussions on the gains women and as a result the economies have made in the workforce and in the overall productivity in recent years.

The author is a student member of Amity Centre of Happiness.

Editor Opinion, Biswarup Mukhopadhyay has given important inputs for the article.