Women harder hit by job losses due to Pandemic

Subject: Economy

Context: According to the recently released PLFS and CMIE data the women has been hit harder by the pandemic w.r.t participation in workforce.

Concept:

From 16.4% in May-August of 2016, the female labour participation rate (employed women as a proportion of all women of working age) fell consistently after the demonetisation shock to stabilise at around 11% between mid-2018 and early 2020, according to estimates of Mumbai-based Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE)
The pandemic, by most accounts, dealt this a hammer blow, pushing this number to around 9 per cent.
Women, according to the CMIE, accounted for 10.7% of the workforce in 2019-20, but they accounted for 13.9% of the job losses in April 2020 — the first month of the lockdown shock. By November 2020, while men recovered most of their lost jobs, women were less fortunate. CMIE estimates that 49% of the total job losses by November 2020 were of women.

Factors for higher impact on women:

Textiles and contact service providers employing more women were hardest hit
schools were shut down and the family unit was under pressure, many women workers, once they lost their jobs, quickly slid back to their full-time role as home-makers and care-givers
lack of transport
Retail has been affected, resulting in an impact to sectors such as garment manufacturing which employs women more