Coronavirus driven Recession and Indian Women

Women are no strangers to gender discrimination in the workplace at micro and macro levels. Virtually all indicators of economic empowerment and participation in the global workforce suggest that women still operate at a significant disadvantage. Contextualising this crisis within the ambit of gender is extremely important to analyse how this pandemic will affect 48% of the Indian population. Multiple factors suggest that the financial crash will probably lead to more job losses for women, making them the hardest hit by this Coronavirus driven recession we are entering globally.

India’s labour force participation rate (LFPR) among women, at almost 36% was already one of the world’s lowest before the pandemic. Women earn 65% of what their male counterparts earn for performing the same work in India (The Global Gender Gap Report 2018, World Economic Forum ). This inequity is only going to be exacerbated owing to this virus that is poking our economy.

Usually a recession has an uneven impact on the sexes, but based on the current scenario, this downturn of events will be in contrast with the effects of a regular recession. Sectors employing a fairly high number of women employed at the administrative level will be worst hit by this crisis. These include Travel and Tourism – Airways, Retail and Convenience Stores, Food Industry – Restaurants, all of which will be forced to resort to job cutting. Amongst the first people to lose jobs will be women – due to the socio-cultural beliefs that women’s jobs are secondary in nature to men’s. In urban areas, most of the female workers are occupied in Household work (Census of India), which is again, a sector that has almost shut down. It is also important to note that most women were already unemployed before the pandemic began. The overall unemployment rate in India is 7%, but it is a soaring 18% among women.

Additionally, as schools shut down, parents will be forced to spend more time and energy in fulfilling extra child care needs. This vast burden in addition to the exclusive responsibility of household work will lie mostly on women, since women’s participation in these activities is seen as permanent, and not contingent. The combined effect of this matrix of events will have a detrimental effect on the physical and mental health of women. Consequently, many women will have to either quit their jobs or turn to part time employment and thus, compromise their financial security leaving the already vulnerable even more at-risk.

Most of the clerical/administrative and data processing jobs which women hold have already been undermined by artificial intelligence and technological advancement. Moreover, jobs which can be done from home are customarily jobs that require a certain level of education, access to and expertise in technology. As per the Census of India, a majority of female workers (87.3 percent) are from rural areas (double the number of male workers from rural areas) who usually lack access to this intellectual currency, and therefore inclusion in the ‘Digital India’.
This slump will especially worsen the condition of women-headed households in India. According to the Socio Economic & Caste Census (SECC), most of the 12.8% (23 million) women-headed households in rural India have a monthly income of less than INR 5000 and are “considered for deprivation”. In the absence of a stable, secure income, these women will be obligated to reduce their household budgets. This also leads to further marginalization of the less privileged.

As the pandemic cripples the economy, Indian women and their employment opportunities will suffer from a disproportionate disadvantage. While eliminating the pandemic driven recession, we also need to be heedful enough to call attention to these gender imbalances so as to not make women’s health and their right to equality spillover damages. All things considered, the government needs to separate gender in economic data and devise policies aimed at guaranteeing equal opportunities in pay and in labour force participation for all genders.

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