Women around the world have been hurt financially by the coronavirus outbreak, but the situation in India, where women suffer from a wide gender gap in employment, wages and education, is more precarious for them than almost anywhere else.
Less than a quarter of women in India are in the labor force — among the poorest standings in the world — and they earn 35 percent less on average than men, compared to the global average of a 16 percent gap. Women represent 49 percent of India’s population yet contribute only 18 percent to its economic output, about half the global average. And when Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 25 imposed a lockdown on this nation of 1.3 billion people, many women were set back even further.
Asha Sharma, 25, is among them. Five years ago, she left the hilly state of Uttarakhand for New Delhi to try to make a living from her passion of dancing to Bollywood songs. That dream lasted only a short while; she couldn’t get into a dance troupe and her degree from a small town was of no help in landing an office job in the city. With a friend’s reference, Sharma found a job at a beauty salon.