Statsguru: 6 charts explain how Covid-19 is hitting women harder than men

It is no breaking news that the coronavirus pandemic has left the economy in a shambles. The gross domestic product has contracted, and the government revenues have been hit. But more importantly, jobs and incomes have been hit severely, weakening the aggregate demand. 

The 2021 edition of Azim Premji University’s report, State of Working India, underlines the depth of this impact. It shows that informality and poverty increased during Covid-19, and the lowest income households took the hardest hit — one in five households reduced food intake. 

The study also shows the unequal economic impact of the crisis on women, compared to men. 

While 60 per cent of working men were unaffected by the crisis, only 18 per cent women remained unaffected. Almost half of working women witnessed “no recovery” back to their original jobs towards the end of 2020, shows chart 1.

Workforce participation, which had plummeted during the nationwide lockdown of 2020, improved in later months, but not to the original level, reveals chart 2.

 

Charts 3 and 4 show the flow of how women and men transitioned from one job status to another between 2019 and 2020. The study shows that a staggering half of working women in 2019 went out of the workforce in 2020. The share of salaried women also dropped to half. The study uses data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s Consumer Pyramid Household Survey. 

Among men, 10 per cent went out of the workforce — a milder impact compared to what women experienced. The share of self-employed among working men remained nearly the same. However, salaried status shrunk for men. 

Though half of working women in 2019 went out of the workforce, new women did enter the workforce in 2020. Those who entered, mostly came in as casual workers, chart 5 reveals. Men mostly entered/re-entered as self-employed. 

Chart 6 shows that incomes fell during 2020, but the salaried saw the smallest cut. Self-employed took the biggest hit.

StatsGuru is a weekly feature. Every Monday, Business Standard guides you through the numbers you need to know to make sense of the headlines; Source: State of Working India report 2021, Azim Premji University, with data sourced from CMIE-CPHS survey Graphics: Datawrapper, BS Design