Gender Norms and Women's Employment During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from India

Amit Basole, M. K. Shravan and R. Vijayamba

Economics Working Paper Archive from Levy Economics Institute

Abstract: We examine the role of household-level social norms regarding women's mobility in determining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women's employment. The shock of the pandemic containment measures, such as India's nationwide lockdown caused both supply- and demand-side disruptions. Nationally representative labor force surveys offer suggestive evidence that loss of income and employment for men could plausibly have increased the labor market participation of women, particularly in self-employment, in order to smooth household consumption. But whether women are able to respond in this manner to a negative income shock is likely to be mediated by social norms around mobility. Using the fourth and fifth rounds of the National Family Health Survey (2015-16 and 2019-20), we show that this was indeed the case. We find that women residing in districts with more progressive gender norms in the baseline period (2015-16) were significantly more likely to be employed as compared to women residing in districts with stricter norms, controlling for the husband’s employment and other relevant household- and individual-level factors.

Keywords: India; COVID-19; women's employment; social norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 J22 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sea and nep-soc
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