Paper short abstract:

This paper presents a framework to analyse the gendered impact of Covid-19 on workers in global value chains, illustrating the channels of transmission using the business process outsourcing, garments and electronics industries.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents a framework to analyse the gendered impact of Covid-19 on workers in global value chains, illustrating the channels of transmission using the business process outsourcing, garments and electronics industries. Keeping the well-being of workers as a central focus, we analyse the impacts of the pandemic through health effects and lockdown measures. Our gendered analysis of these pathways focuses on multi-dimensional aspects of well-being, understands the economy as encompassing both production and social reproduction spheres, and examines the social norms and structures of power that produce gender inequalities. As the pandemic accelerates automation in GVCs, we also examine the likely consequences for women workers who are expected to lose out as a result. The paper argues that the pandemic exposes and amplifies the existing vulnerabilities of women workers in GVCs. The distinctive nature of the pandemic is likely to alter the course of the GVC model with its effects on labour varying by industry, geography, and the structural position of workers.