Imperatives of recognising the complexities: gendered impacts and responses to COVID-19 in India.

This paper argues that the gendered impact of COVID-19 has both visible and hidden dimensions, and both immediate effects linked with lockdowns and longer-term effects that are likely to emerge sequentially in time and affect recovery. Much of the existing feminist literature on the impact of COVID-19 has neglected these complexities and focused mainly on care work and domestic violence. This has diverted attention away from other key concerns such as livelihood loss, food and nutritional insecurity, indebtedness, rising poverty, and the low resilience of most women in developing economies. Even care work and domestic violence have complex facets that tend to be missed. Using examples from India, the paper outlines the kinds of gendered effects we might expect, the extent to which these have been traced in existing surveys, and the data gaps. It also highlights the potential of group approaches in enhancing women's economic recovery and providing social protection from the worst outcomes of the pandemic-approaches that could guide us towards effective policy pathways for 'building back better.'

Reflections on the Less Visible and Less Measured: Gender and COVID-19 in India

The gender effects of COVID-19 are complex, and extend much beyond the issues of care work and domestic violence that have captured global attention. Some effects have been immediate, such as job losses, food shortages, and enhanced domestic work burdens;others will emerge in time, such as the depletion of savings and assets and pandemic-related widowhood, which would make recovery difficult. I use examples from India to outline the complexity of such outcomes, the limitations of the many telephone surveys conducted during the pandemic, and the importance of anticipating both the immediate and the sequential effects.We can anticipate these effects by drawing on our knowledge of preexisting gender inequalities and people?s coping strategies under crises, as well as real-time media alerts. Prior conceptualization can help us design better surveys for capturing both the visible and less visible impact of the pandemic, as well as formulate more effective policies for mitigating the adverse effects. I also highlight the advantages of group-based approaches for protecting women?s livelihoods during such crises, and emphasize the need to create a synergy between feminist theory, evidence gathering, and policy formulation.

Livelihoods in COVID times: Gendered perils and new pathways in India

This piece argues that to understand the gendered impact of livelihood loss due to COVID-19, we must examine not only the direct effects on women’s earnings but also the indirect effects on intra-household dynamics and vulnerabilities, such as food insecurity, depletion of savings and assets, social isolation, and mobility loss. And these precarities and perils are faced not just by women who have lost paid jobs, but also by women who were unpaid workers on family enterprises which have been crippled. Moreover, women can be affected disproportionately not only by the erosion of their own livelihoods, but also by the loss of male jobs and return migration from cities to villages, leading to occupational crowding, extended domestic work, hunger, and even domestic violence. The success of women-centric groups in states such as Kerala, however, suggests that not all outcomes have been adverse. Drawing on telephone surveys and other emerging evidence on the pandemic in India, this piece examines the direct and indirect effects on women of livelihood losses by both genders, especially in poor households, as well as the lessons offered by women-led group approaches for charting new developmental pathways.

COVID-19 and the case for global development.

COVID-19 accentuates the case for a global, rather than an international, development paradigm. The novel disease is a prime example of a development challenge for all countries, through the failure of public health as a global public good. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the falsity of any assumption that the global North has all the expertise and solutions to tackle global challenges, and has further highlighted the need for multi-directional learning and transformation in all countries towards a more sustainable and equitable world. We illustrate our argument for a global development paradigm by examining the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic across four themes or 'vignettes': global value chains, digitalisation, debt, and climate change. We conclude that development studies must adapt to a very different context from when the field emerged in the mid-20th century.