Revelations in the World Economic Forum’s latest Gender Gap Index hold no surprises as far as India’s poor performance is concerned. Women have been the biggest casualties not just of the impact of the Covid-19-induced lockdowns but of the 2016 demonetisation, which saw unemployment soar to a 45-year high. Well before the pandemic, women’s participation rate in the workforce was at a low 24.8 per cent. Widespread joblessness following the lockdown last year reduced that to 22.3 per cent, and research shows that though men have gradually returned to work in the post-Covid recovery, far fewer women did. India’s ranking has fallen a steep 28 spots to 140 among 156 countries. In South Asia, only Pakistan and Afghanistan, two of the world’s basket cases, do worse.
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