Women Won’t Recover Easily From India’s Pandemic
The Covid-19 crisis has made their already daunting road to economic and social independence even more difficult.
Burdened by childcare and household work, women are bearing the brunt of India’s recession.
Photographer: Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty Images
Amid the Covid-19 crisis, three out of four Indians are experiencing their first recession. As might be expected, women are bearing the brunt of the pain — and the consequences could be long-lasting.
A tiny elite of urban, educated women has benefited from the shift to remote work under lockdown: A recent study released by LinkedIn, based on internal data for India, found women’s participation in the labor force actually increased by 7% between April and July. But this only applies to jobs in the formal, white-collar, urban economy — a tiny fraction of the labor market. For most Indian women, the situation is deeply worrying.