March 2021, South Asia 
To close its labour gender gap, India must address its data gap
Ranjitha Puskur

Without research and data on the specific needs and struggles of female workers, the Indian government cannot address the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on its labour force.

In December 2020, data released by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the economy led to a disproportionate fall in the labour participation rate of women in the country.

According to CMIE, women accounted for 10.7 percent of the workforce in 2019-20, but they suffered 13.9 percent of the job losses in April 2020, the first month of the lockdown shock. By November 2020, men had recovered most of their lost jobs but women were less fortunate. Nearly 49 percent of the job losses by November 2020 were of women.

These damning statistics led many to believe women started to “disappear” from India’s labour force due to the pandemic.

This is, however, a misconception.

Even before the pandemic, most economically active women in the country were informal workers in low-paid sectors, such as agriculture, and thus not included in official labour statistics. According to Oxfam, some 80 percent of the economically active women in India are employed, informally, in the agriculture sector.

While the CMIE data clearly shows that the economic downturn caused by the pandemic led to a disproportionate number of women being pushed out of the formal labour force, we do not really know the extent of its effect on women, especially rural women, who have been working informally.