Early Effects of Lockdown in India: Gender Gaps in Job Losses and Domestic Work
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Early Effects of Lockdown in India: Gender Gaps in Job Losses and Domestic Work Ashwini Deshpande1
© Indian Society of Labour Economics 2020
Abstract India imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in the world to contain the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Stringency Index developed by the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, by the 25th of March, 2020, India had already reached the highest possible level of stringency (index value = 100). This involved a near-complete shutdown of all economic activity. What were the labour market implications of this shutdown? The first-order effects are evident in the massive increase in total unemployment. However, is the pandemic and its aftermath a great leveller? Are the labour implications of the lockdown gender neutral? How did the lockdown affect domestic time allocation, in particular time spent on domestic work and with friends? Were these changes gender neutral, given that the lockdown was gender blind? keywords Covid-19 · Lockdown · Employment · Gender · India
1 Background International evidence indicates that in absolute terms, more women are likely to face job losses than men. In India, we have to remember the pre-existing gender inequality in labour force participation rates and employment. Note that between 2004–05 and 2017–18, while gaps between men and women in educational attainment have narrowed considerably, gaps in labour force participation widened. Female Labour Force Participation Rate (FLFPR), stubbornly and persistently low in India over decades, has declined precipitously over the last 15 years. Will the already widening gender gap in work participation and employment widen further due to lockdown and recession? Are women already in the labour force (a small and declining proportion of working-age women) more vulnerable to job losses compared to men? * Ashwini Deshpande [email protected] 1
Ashoka University, Sonipat, India
13
Vol.:(0123456789) ISLE
The Indian Journal of Labour Economics
2 Data I investigate these issues in a recent paper (Deshpande 2020).1 I investigate shifts in both employment patterns and time allocation at home using data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE)’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS) database, which is a private data provider, collecting weekly data at the national level since January 2016. It is a longitudinal data set covering 174, 405 households (roughly 10,900 households per week and 43,600 per month). Each household is followed three times per year. Typically, papers on employment and labour market outcomes for India are based on surveys such as the official National Sample Survey (NSS), or the publicly available India Human Development Survey (IHDS). However, the most recent round of the former is only available for 2017–18, and for the latter for 2011–12. Thus, the CMIE CPHS data are currently the only national-level source for assessing changes in employment in real time, especially if we want to assess the immediate effect o
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