Evidence Review of Covid-19 and Women’s Informal Employment: A Call to Support the Most Vulnerable First in the Economic Recovery
online resource
posted on 2024-09-05, 21:22authored byAishwarya Lakshmi Ratan, Sally Roever, Renana Jhabvala, Paromita Sen
More than a year has elapsed since COVID-19
plunged the world into uncertainty. Month after
month, cascades of reports continue to expose
the pandemic’s devastating and widespread
impact on women’s livelihoods. Women the world
over have been impacted, yet women in informal
employment, with little to no social and labour
protections, have been disproportionately
ravaged.
In low- and lower-middle income countries,
informal employment is the norm for women. In
Africa and India, roughly 90 percent of employed
women are informal workers. According to one
India study, in the wake of COVID-19, 83 percent
of women informal workers faced a severe
income drop, with half relying on grants for food
security. Similarly, an April 2020 survey covering
12 cities around the world conducted by Women
in Informal Employment: Globalizing and
Organizing (WIEGO), a global network focused on
women in informal employment, found that
during the peak COVID-19 lockdown period in
each city, women informal workers’ earnings, on
average, were only about 20 percent of their
pre-COVID-19 levels (compared with men who
were earning about 25 percent of their prepandemic earnings).
Funding
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
History
Publisher
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Citation
Lakshmi Ratan, A.; Roever, S.; Jhabvala, R. and Sen, P. (2021) Evidence Review of COVID-19 and Women’s Informal Employment: A Call to Support the Most Vulnerable First in the Economic Recovery, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation