COVID-19 majorly impacted women in socio-economic spheres

The coronavirus pandemic has majorly impacted human health, but a few reports suggest the pandemic is affecting women more than men. A study revealed that four out of every ten working women in the country lost their jobs while rural women were hit the hardest during the lockdown.

Hyderabad: Amid the present coronavirus pandemic, the women are facing a heightened risk of crisis owing to many cultural and socio-economic factors.

Though concern have emerged for migrants predicaments but the COVID-19 impact on women in socio-economic spheres has not been given utmost importance.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: "Put women and girls at the centre of efforts to recover from COVID."

The huge economic uncertainties due to coronavirus increases women’s fragility that exposes them to face the increased unemployment. The early data suggests that unemployment related to the pandemic is impacting women more than men.

According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) report, based on payroll data between February and March 2020, women faced nearly 60% of job losses—outnumbering men in all sectors of the economy.

IPWR study suggests that the women most disproportionately lost jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector, as well as retail, professional and business services and non-durable goods manufacturing.

There was 39 per cent fall in employment of women in just April, as compared to 29% for men, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) reported.

COVID-19 majorly impacted women in socio-economic spheres

This further revealed that four out of every ten working women in the country lost their jobs while rural women were hit the hardest during the lockdown.

The UNESCO has informed that 154 crore students enrolled in school or university, including nearly 74 crore girls are severely impacted by the closure of educational institutions across the world amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Around 11 crore of these girls are living in developed countries were getting educated is already a struggle.

It has been estimated that over 89 per cent of students are out of school due to pandemic which will also lead to increased drop-out rates and further entrench gender gaps in education.

Though women are involved in some kind of productive works they are largely employed in low paid informal sectors with little or no social security.

According to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an Indian woman does nearly six hours of unpaid work each day in comparison to an Indian male who barely gives 51.8 minutes to such tasks.

The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) in the year 2017-2018 stated that approximately 88% of total women’s employment is informal in India and 73% of employed women earn their livelihood working in the informal sector.

A telephonic quantitative survey pointed out that around 83% of women informal workers covered in the study were facing severe income drop.

Meanwhile, in the time of social distancing and quarantine, the women cell is receiving more calls of domestic violence across the country.

The National Commission for Women received a significantly higher number of calls seeking protection from domestic violence after the nationwide lockdown.

Around 4233 complaints made in the month of April-May include about 20.6 per cent cases related to domestic violence.

The complaints of domestic violence accounted for 45.07 per cent of the total 2028 complaints in May.

While in comparison to the pre-lockdown period the percentage of domestic violence complaint accounted 18.54 %, 21.21 % and 22.21 % out of 1462, 1424 and 1347 complaints respectively in the month of January, February and March.