Women in lower-middle-income countries facing worst brunt of pandemic: Data

There are 44 million fewer jobs for women across the world compared to pre-pandemic period; 25.5 million fewer jobs were available in lower-middle-income countries

On Monday, a report released by the International Labour Organisation highlighted that the 112 million jobs lost during the pandemic were yet to return to the global economy. As per the report, employment had reduced by 3.8 per cent, compared to the fourth quarter in 2019, translating into 112 million full-time jobs. The employment reduction is on account for lower number of hours worked in a job.   

The deterioration had come on account of lockdowns in China. A Business Standard analysis found that a correction may not repair the imbalance which has been created with regard to the gender gap. 

Although an average work week is set to include 48-hours of work life, women only worked 18.9 hours on average, in contrast men worked 33.4 hours per week. While average hours worked per female declined 4.5 per cent between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2022, the corresponding decline for men was 3.8 per cent during this period, thereby widening the gap.  
 

Further analysis shows that the brunt has been borne by women in lower-middle-income economies, where the situation for women was much worse, to begin with.

Globally, 44.4 million fewer jobs were available in the first quarter of 2022, compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. Of these, 25.5 million jobs were lost in lower-middle-income countries. The number of jobs are calculated by accounting for the increase or decrease in number of hours worked between the fourth quarter of 2019 and first quarter of 2022 and dividing it by 48-hours per week. In terms of hours worked, women in lower-middle-income countries witnessed an 8.2 per cent decline in number of hours of employment compared to just 4.8 per cent decline for men—the highest gap among all regions. 
 

Furthermore, ILO data shows that the decline for women was much higher than the decline for men, especially in the informal sector. The number of women in informal employment declined by 24 per cent in 2020 Q2, compared to 18 per cent for men.

Given the increased pace of automation, it also remains to be seen whether these jobs will return in the long run. 

“Urgent attention needs to be paid to widen the social security net for the unorganised female workforce; policies need to be tweaked to address women discrimination and adequate emphasis needs to be placed on women skill building because increasing women’s labour force participation by ten percentage points could add $770 billion to India’s GDP by 2025,” Ashwajit Singh, Managing Director, IPE Global (international development consulting firm) told Business Standard. 

India had one of the lowest female labour force participation rates in the sub-continent, with only a fifth of women employed.