Gender-Blind but Not Gender-Neutral

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We are glad to have Professor Ashwini Deshpande with us for the fourth talk in The Indian Economy Webinar Series!

The talk will present evidence on the first effects of the Covid-19 induced lockdown on job losses, and changes in time spent on domestic work, based on nationally representative data for India. The lockdown was gender-blind, but its effects were not gender neutral. Given the pre-existing gaps in labour force participation and employment, more men lost jobs than women in absolute numbers. But conditional on being employed pre-lockdown, the likelihood of women losing employment was higher. There was an interesting change in hours spent on domestic work. Hours spent by both women and men went up post-lockdown and women's hours continued to be more than those of men, but the gender gap in hours decreased in the first month of the lockdown.

Professor Ashwini Deshpande is a Professor of Economics and the Founding Director of the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) at Ashoka University. She has extensively worked on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action, with a focus on caste and gender in India and has authored several books and other publications on the same. To read more about Professor Deshpande, you can visit her website.