The gendered effects of the ongoing lockdown and school closures in South Africa: Evidence from NIDS-CRAM Waves 1 and 2
Stellenbosch Working Paper Series No. WP21/2020Publication date: November 2020
Author(s):
[protected email address] (Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University)
The data from Wave 1 of NIDS-CRAM showed that women were disproportionately affected by the Covid-19 crisis and the first month of the lockdown period in South Africa. Not only were they much more likely than men to lose their jobs between February and April or to work fewer hours compared to the pre-crisis period, they also took on a greater share of the additional childcare as a result of school closures and the suspension of all childcare services. In this policy paper, we use Wave 2 of NIDS-CRAM to explore how women and men have fared as the economy started to reopen and lockdown restrictions were relaxed. The data suggest that with the move from Level 5 lockdown in April to Level 3 lockdown in June, there was hardly any change in employment levels overall. However, women may have gained slightly relative to men. Nonetheless, given the very large job losses recorded among women between February and April (women lost 2 million jobs and men 1 million jobs), women still remained well behind men in reaching their pre-Covid employment levels in June. In contrast, men benefited more from the reopening of some school grades and childcare services in June. Compared to April, the hours men reported spending on childcare in June fell by more than the hours women reported spending on childcare. The data also show that much higher numbers of women than men found childcare to affect their ability to work, to work the same hours as before lockdown, and to search for work.
JEL Classification:J10, J16
Keywords:gender, employment, childcare, Covid-19, lockdown, South Africa
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Monday 28 July 202512:00-13:00
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Topic: "Two competing approaches in South African competition policy: merger control and anti-cartel enforcement over the past 30 years"
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Professor Johan Fourie: Stellenbosch University
Topic: "Economic History: TBC"
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18 Jul 2025 Encouraging data, but messy politics while US tariff deadline loomsThe big global data prints of the week came on Tuesday, with better-than-expected Chinese GDP growth for Q2 and US core CPI coming in lower than expected, but still (finally) reflecting some signs of tariffs being passed on to consumers. Locally, the uptick in mining production and retail sales was positive for Q2 GDP dynamics. In addition to the data,...
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