Covid cut Indian women out of job market, now 90% aren’t in workforce

As the world climbs out of the pandemic, economists warn of a troubling data point: Failing to restore jobs for women could shave trillions of dollars off global economic growth.

A worker wearing a protective mask works on a computer at a Flipkart warehouse in Koduvalli, Thiruvallur | Representational image | Bloomberg

RONOJOY MAZUMDAR  and ARCHANA CHAUDHARY, The Print, 2 June, 2022, Mumbai: For years, Sanchuri Bhuniya fought her parents’ pleas to settle down. She wanted to travel and earn money — not become a housewife.

So in 2019, Bhuniya snuck out of her isolated village in eastern India. She took a train hundreds of miles south to the city of Bengaluru and found work in a garment factory earning $120 a month. The job liberated her. “I ran away,” she said. “That’s the only way I was able to go.”

That life of financial freedom ended abruptly with the arrival of Covid-19. In 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared a nationwide lockdown to curb infections, shutting almost all businesses. Within a few weeks, more than 100 million Indians lost their jobs, including Bhuniya, who was forced to return to her village and never found another stable employer.

As the world climbs out of the pandemic, economists warn of a troubling data point: Failing to restore jobs for women — who have been less likely than men to return to the workforce — could shave trillions of dollars off global economic growth. The forecast is particularly bleak in developing countries like India, where female labor force participation fell so steeply that it’s now in the same league as war-torn Yemen.