Precarity in a Time of Uncertainty: Gendered Employment Patterns during the Covid-19 Lockdown in India

Abstract

India implemented one of the world's most stringent lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 crisis. This paper examines whether the impacts of the lockdown on employment differed by gender in areas surrounding Delhi. An ongoing monthly employment survey between March 2019 and May 2020 allows for comparison in employment before and after the lockdown. Estimates based on random-effects logistic regression models show that for men, the predicted probability of employment declined from 0.88 to 0.57, while that for women fell from 0.34 to 0.22. Women's concentration in self-employment may be one of the reasons why women's employment was somewhat protected. However, when we look only at wage workers, we find that women experienced greater job losses than men with predicted employment probability for wage employment for men declining by 40 percent compared to 72 percent for women.