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Down and out? The gendered impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic on India’s labour market

Abraham, Rosa; Basole, Amit; Kesar, Surbhi

Authors

Rosa Abraham

Amit Basole



Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has created unprecedented disruptions in labour markets across the world including loss of employment and decline in incomes. Using panel data from India, we investigate the differential impact of the shock on labour market outcomes for male and female workers. We find that, conditional on being in the workforce prior to the pandemic, women were seven times more likely to lose work during the nationwide lockdown, and conditional on losing work, eleven times more likely to not return to work subsequently, compared to men. Using logit regressions on a sample stratified by gender, we find that daily wage and young workers, whether men or women, were more likely to face job loss. Education shielded male workers from job loss, whereas highly educated female workers were more vulnerable to job loss. Marriage had contrasting effects for men and women, with married women less likely to return to work and married men more likely to return to work. Religion and gender intersect to exacerbate the disproportionate impact, with Muslim women more likely to not return to work, unlike Muslim men for whom we find religion having no significant impact. Finally, for those workers who did return to work, we find that a large share of men in the workforce moved to self-employment or daily wage work, in agriculture, trade or construction. For women, on the other hand, there is limited movement into alternate employment arrangements or industries. This suggests that typical ‘fallback’ options for employment do not exist for women. During such a shock, women are forced to exit the workforce whereas men negotiate across industries and employment arrangements.

Citation

Abraham, R., Basole, A., & Kesar, S. (2022). Down and out? The gendered impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic on India’s labour market. Economia Politica, 39(1), 101-128. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40888-021-00234-8

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 23, 2021
Online Publication Date Jul 14, 2021
Publication Date Apr 1, 2022
Deposit Date Nov 4, 2022
Publicly Available Date Jul 15, 2121
Journal Economia Politica
Print ISSN 1120-2890
Electronic ISSN 1973-820X
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 39
Issue 1
Pages 101-128
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s40888-021-00234-8
Keywords Covid-19, India, Lockdown, Employment transitions, Gender, Self-employment
Publisher URL https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40888-021-00234-8
Related Public URLs https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35422579/
Additional Information Data Access Statement : The data for this project is proprietary but may be obtained with Data Use Agreements with the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). Researchers interested in access to the data may visit https://peopleofindiadx.cmie.com/ for details on subscribing to the data.

Files

This file is under embargo until Jul 15, 2121 due to copyright reasons.

Contact outputs@soas.ac.uk to request a copy for personal use.




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