Reflections on the less visible and less measured: Gender and COVID-19 in India

The global focus on the gendered impact of COVID-19 has been largely on two issues: domestic violence and care work. Both issues are clearly important, but they do not cover the full range of gendered fallouts and their implications. Beyond the visible and short-term impact of the pandemic lie longer-term implications for the many who are unable to recover economically, socially, or emotionally, implications that are likely to play out differently for women and men and across socio-economic groups. In fact, even the much discussed rise in domestic violence is complex, catalyzed by multiple factors, some hidden such as social norms and intra-household power relations, others visible such as women’s property ownership and job losses under the pandemic. Using examples from India, I share reflections on the complexity of outcomes we might expect, the limitations of existing data and evidence, and the imperatives of tracking and monitoring shifts over time to capture both the immediate and the sequential effects.