A Study by Azim Premji University’s senior research fellow Rosa Abraham, associate professor Amit Basole and assistant professor Surbhi Kesar.

Since the beginning of this pandemic, several companies are facing loss. Some of the companies and small scale industries have even terminated their productions. Even the largest of the Global economies are hit severely by this pandemic.

To solve this economic crises companies have been performing lay-outs. People who are no more required are getting laid out and losing their jobs. But what is interesting to see in this time is how this virus has affected the gender neutrality not only in India but globally.

Both the men and the women continue to lose their jobs in this national lockdown. But it seems that this pandemic has more adversely affected the jobs of women than men. Women account for about 39% of the global employment and 54% of the overall job losses. Globally the rate of women losing their jobs is 1.8 times more than that of the men. In India, there were 7 times more women who lost their jobs than men. But what is more striking is unlikeliness of women to return to the jobs is 11 times higher compared to men.

The lifting of lockdown restrictions was associated with a return to work but the recovery was more muted for women. Prior to the pandemic, about 70% of working age men were employed. By August – September 2020, 88% of them remained employed or returned to work. By contrast, of 10% of working age women who were employed before the pandemic, only 53% remained employed or returned to work by August – September 2020.

While there was a high job loss seen in the organized sector, the job loss wasn’t seen in the unorganized sector. Highly educated women were more vulnerable to lose their jobs. Education had its negative impact on the employment of women. ‘It is possible that relatively more educated women are able to withdraw from the workforce in face of uncertain conditions such as the lockdown, while this option might not be available to less educated women’, A research paper ‘Down and Out? The Gendered Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on India’s Labour Market’ presented in its observation. It also suggested that women did not have typical ‘fallback’ options in the terms of employment.

Some of the reasons are as follows:

• Married women were less likely to return to work than married men.
• Women from large households followed the same unlikeliness.
• The social norms were again revoked due to the pandemic which resulted in this inequality.
• The unappreciated household burden plays a vital role in the same.

A study showed that the difference created in the gender might take more than 135 years to recover. Women need to stand up for themselves. Husbands need to share the household burden of their wives. There can be simple steps which we can take to improve the condition of women in our country because as our Former Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru said, ‘The growth of the nation can be determined by seeing the condition of its women’.