Gender differentiated economic responses to crises in developing countries: insights for COVID-19 recovery policies

COVID-19 has wide-ranging and long-term implications for individual and household outcomes. Policymakers expect that the economic impact of COVID-19, channeled through labor markets, will disproportionately fall on women and girls, relative to men and boys. Surprisingly, little evidence exists for informing gender-sensitive COVID-19 recovery policies. This study examines the existence of gender-differentiated dynamic responses of labor market and other household welfare outcomes to GDP contractions using historical country level panel data for South/South-East Asia and West Africa. The econometric results reveal large gender differences in economic outcomes post crisis and provide insights for designing gender-sensitive COVID-19 recovery policies.