Life in Islamabad and Rawalpindi During the Pandemic: Gender and Sector of Employment as Main Contributing Factors

Covid-19 pandemic was a stress test to Pakistan’s healthcare systems, social policies, and political stability. This study explores Pakistanis’ lived experiences during the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, including the impacts of Covid-19 on their livelihood, as well as their perceptions and opinions of their government’s policy measures. Through a questionnaire survey of 1000 participants living in the cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, this study found that livelihood, including food supply and household finance were main challenges facing many Pakistanis during the Covid-19 pandemic; and the level of vulnerabilities were tightly related to socio-demographic characteristics like gender, living arrangement, and sector of employment. Men are more likely to suffer from hunger, and men work in the informal sector and living in a multigeneration (or multi-nuclear household) tend to be more vulnerable than others. Almost all employed respondents reported income deduction and most of them reported the increase of household expenditure during the pandemic. The mixed opinions on the government’s Covid-19 measures and policies were associated to respondents’ socio-demographic characteristics. There were sharp gender differences as well. Men were more in agreement with the government’s policies than women, which implies a gender based information access disparity.