Abstract
This paper argues that the gendered impact of COVID-19 has both visible and hidden dimensions, and both immediate effects linked with lockdowns and longer-term effects that are likely to emerge sequentially in time and affect recovery. Much of the existing feminist literature on the impact of COVID-19 has neglected these complexities and focused mainly on care work and domestic violence. This has diverted attention away from other key concerns such as livelihood loss, food and nutritional insecurity, indebtedness, rising poverty, and the low resilience of most women in developing economies. Even care work and domestic violence have complex facets that tend to be missed. Using examples from India, the paper outlines the kinds of gendered effects we might expect, the extent to which these have been traced in existing surveys, and the data gaps. It also highlights the potential of group approaches in enhancing women’s economic recovery and providing social protection from the worst outcomes of the pandemic—approaches that could guide us towards effective policy pathways for ‘building back better.’
Highlights
To understand the gendered impact of COVID-19, we need to focus both on the visible dimensions of the impact and the hidden dimensions; and both on the immediate effects of the pandemic and lockdowns, and on the medium and long-term effects which are starting to emerge and could worsen with time
Economia Politica can arise due to women’s inability to recover from the troughs they encountered in the immediate onslaught of the pandemic in terms of livelihood loss, which spill over to food insecurity, depletion of savings, reduction in credit-worthiness, a decline in intra-household bargaining power (Agarwal, 1997), and so on
Even the earlier-mentioned CSO (2020) survey for rural India did not tell us the relative sacrifice of male and female family members, it highlighted a reduction in the number of daily meals and items eaten per meal during the pandemic
Summary
To understand the gendered impact of COVID-19, we need to focus both on the visible dimensions of the impact and the hidden dimensions; and both on the immediate effects of the pandemic and lockdowns, and on the medium and long-term effects which are starting to emerge and could worsen with time. Using India as an illustration, this paper first outlines what kinds of gendered outcomes we can expect, drawing on our knowledge of pre-existing gender inequalities and people’s coping strategies under other types of crises (see Agarwal, 2021a, 2021b) It examines COVID-related evidence to see to what extent these potential effects are captured by existing surveys, and the data gaps that remain. It highlights group approaches through which women have remained, or can remain, better protected from the worst economic outcomes of the pandemic, and point to ways forward for shaping effective future policies
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