This blog has been co-authored with Shraddha Shrivastava The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing gender inequalities with its disproportionate impact on women. Even before the pandemic, women in India spent nearly 7 times more hours on unpaid work compared to men (OECD Stat, 2021), which has surged further now (Chauhan, 2020). While lockdown restrictions and economic tensions are reported to have increased domestic violence (Rukmini, 2020), families are resorting to other negative coping mechanisms such as reducing food intake (Azim Premji University, 2020), pulling children out of school (Seethalakshmi, 2020), child labour (Ellis-Peterson and Chaurasia, 2020) and child marriage (BBC News, 2020) - a major brunt of which is borne by women and girls. Women are also more...
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