These service workers, both men and women, normally deemed low-skilled, are now recognized as essential to ensure product sales and a host of services such as deliveries, cleaning services, home health assistance, garbage disposal, and transport. Although essential workers include well-paid professionals such as doctors, scientists, and public health officials, the vast majority of those on the front line are made up of low-wage service workers. The International Monetary Fund warns that left unchecked, “growing disparities will lead to long-lasting grievances and ultimately to social unrest” (Georgieva and Gopinath Citation2020).Ī more salutary outcome of the crisis has been to draw attention to essential workers, those whose services are not only necessary to sustain life and health but also to help maintain the basics of everyday existence. We are thus likely to emerge from this crisis with even higher levels of inequality than which we entered it. Equally important is the increase in inactivity rates for both women and men, which has surpassed the surge in unemployment rates in most countries for which we have data, with the absolute increase being higher for women than for men.Īlthough the virus does not discriminate between men and women, or between the rich and poor, regardless of context, growing evidence from around the globe indicates that men and women from the lowest-income households and socially marginalized groups have borne the brunt of the economic crisis that is accompanying the pandemic. In some countries, though, men make up the majority of those in precarious work, and their unemployment is far more visible. Citation2020 International Labour Organization Citation2020a Wenham, Smith, and Morgan Citation2020). Emerging evidence indicates that women have experienced greater job losses than men in numerous countries, given their overrepresentation in retail, food service, and hospitality, some of the industries facing the most widespread business closures (Alon et al. Governments around the world responded with lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, resulting in business closures and widespread unemployment. Gender differentials in comorbidities such as smoking as well as in mobility and activity outside of the home help to explain marked differences across countries in whether men or women are at greater risk of contracting and dying from the virus. The pandemic is both a health and a socioeconomic crisis, with very different outcomes by gender. The global fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic is deeply connected with the kinds of issues that feminist economists have long explored and investigated. Migrant workers are especially vulnerable to job loss, benefit exclusions, and travel bans.Ĭountries with women leaders had more favorable outcomes during the pandemic. Globally, more women than men are employed in sectors hardest hit by the pandemic.Įssential and frontline workers at higher risk of exposure are predominantly women.
Women from lowest-income households and marginalized groups bore the brunt of the COVID-19 crisis. The article concludes that policy response strategies to the crisis by women leaders have contributed to more favorable outcomes compared to outcomes in countries led by men. Further, domestic violence has increased in frequency and severity across countries. Evidence also indicates that stay-at-home orders have increased unpaid care workloads, which have fallen disproportionately to women. However, women’s relatively high representation in sectors hardest hit by lockdown orders has translated into larger declines in employment for women than men in numerous countries. In 112 countries that reported sex-disaggregated data on COVID-19 cases, men showed an overall higher infection rate than women, and an even higher mortality rate. The pandemic has generated massive losses in lives, impacted people’s health, disrupted markets and livelihoods, and created profound reverberations in the home. This article provides a contextual framework for understanding the gendered dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic and its health, social, and economic outcomes.
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