India, US employment surveys show Covid-19 can skew gender parity

McKinsey report puts women job losses twice as high as men

Gender bias, with regard to job losses, seems to be another fallout of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

According to a report, released recently by management consultant firm McKinsey & Co, while most have been negatively affected by the crisis, women’s livelihoods are more vulnerable to the pandemic.

“The magnitude of inequality is striking: Unemployment surveys in the United States and India, where gender-disaggregated data are available, suggest that female job-loss rates resulting from Covid-19 are about 1.8 times higher than male job-loss rates,” the report said. 

Similarly, in India, women made up 20 per cent of the workforce before Covid-19; their share of