IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0278710.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Impact of Covid-19 on informal employment: A case study of women domestic workers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Author

Listed:
  • Adnan Ahmad Dogar
  • Ikram Shah
  • Tahir Mahmood
  • Noor Elahi
  • Arif Alam
  • Urooj Gul Jadoon

Abstract

COVID-19 indiscriminately impacted all the segments of the global society. Due to the unstructured job market, women in the informal sector were at high risk to experience the adverse effects of the pandemic. This paper aims to explore the impact of COVID-19 on women domestic workers and their families. Semi structured interviews conducted with fifty-four women domestic workers in three districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan were analyzed in five themes: disruption caused by lockdown, loss of livelihood, economic hardships, social support mechanism, and challenges faced during the pandemic. The study underlines that the pandemic left severe impacts on access to basic services, employment, food security at household level and pattern of expenditures. The plummeting economic activities led to sudden drops in earnings that forced families to sell their assets and incur debts. Respondents lamented over the social support system and considered it a necessary but not sufficient condition for uplifting the lives of the poor. Strains in marital relationships led to stress, anxiety and domestic violence among families. The utmost concern was the restoration of economic activities and urgent policy interventions to strengthen social safety measures for the vulnerable segments of society.

Suggested Citation

  • Adnan Ahmad Dogar & Ikram Shah & Tahir Mahmood & Noor Elahi & Arif Alam & Urooj Gul Jadoon, 2022. "Impact of Covid-19 on informal employment: A case study of women domestic workers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(12), pages 1-14, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0278710
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0278710
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278710
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278710&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0278710?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adams-Prassl, A. & Boneva, T. & Golin, M. & Rauh, C., 2020. "Work Tasks That Can Be Done From Home: Evidence on Variation Within and Across Occupations and Industries," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2040, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    2. Hong Yan Li & Hui Cao & Doris Y. P. Leung & Yim Wah Mak, 2020. "The Psychological Impacts of a COVID-19 Outbreak on College Students in China: A Longitudinal Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(11), pages 1-11, June.
    3. Adams-Prassl, Abi & Boneva, Teodora & Golin, Marta & Rauh, Christopher, 2022. "Work that can be done from home: evidence on variation within and across occupations and industries," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    4. Rahmiye Figen Ceylan & Burhan Ozkan & Esra Mulazimogullari, 2020. "Historical evidence for economic effects of COVID-19," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 21(6), pages 817-823, August.
    5. ., 2020. "Impact of international economic integration on location," Chapters, in: Evolutionary Spatial Economics, chapter 32, pages 579-595, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vikkram Singh & Homayoun Shirazi & Jessica Turetken, 2022. "The COVID-19 Era—Influencers of Uneven Sector Performance: A Canadian Perspective," Economies, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-24, February.
    2. Gottlieb Charles & Grobovšek Jan & Poschke Markus & Saltiel Fernando, 2022. "Lockdown Accounting," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 22(1), pages 197-210, January.
    3. Alipour, Jean-Victor & Fadinger, Harald & Schymik, Jan, 2021. "My home is my castle – The benefits of working from home during a pandemic crisis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    4. Behrens, Kristian & Kichko, Sergei & Thisse, Jacques-Francois, 2024. "Working from home: Too much of a good thing?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    5. Emil Mihaylov, 2022. "Working from Home in the Netherlands: Looking Inside the Blackbox of Work and Occupations," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 22-096/VI, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Toshihiro Okubo, 2024. "Non‐routine tasks and ICT tools in telework," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 38(2), pages 177-202, June.
    7. Jordy Meekes & Wolter H J Hassink & Guyonne Kalb, 2023. "Essential work and emergency childcare: identifying gender differences in COVID-19 effects on labour demand and supply," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 75(2), pages 393-417.
    8. Michael Gibbs & Friederike Mengel & Christoph Siemroth, 2023. "Work from Home and Productivity: Evidence from Personnel and Analytics Data on Information Technology Professionals," Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 7-41.
    9. Aditya Goenka & Lin Liu & Manh-Hung Nguyen, 2021. "Modeling optimal quarantines with waning immunity," Discussion Papers 21-10, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    10. Esme Işık & Ayfer Özyılmaz & Metin Toprak & Yüksel Bayraktar & Figen Büyükakın & Mehmet Fırat Olgun, 2022. "Will Outbreaks Increase or Reduce Income Inequality? the Case of COVID-19," Istanbul Business Research, Istanbul University Business School, vol. 51(2), pages 583-605, November.
    11. Agostinelli, Francesco & Doepke, Matthias & Sorrenti, Giuseppe & Zilibotti, Fabrizio, 2022. "When the great equalizer shuts down: Schools, peers, and parents in pandemic times," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    12. Deole, Sumit S. & Deter, Max & Huang, Yue, 2023. "Home sweet home: Working from home and employee performance during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    13. Squicciarini, Mara & Juhász, Réka & Voigtländer, Nico, 2020. "Away from Home and Back: Coordinating (Remote) Workers in 1800 and 2020," CEPR Discussion Papers 15578, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Bamieh, Omar & Ziegler, Lennart, 2022. "Are remote work options the new standard? Evidence from vacancy postings during the COVID-19 crisis," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    15. Jacek Rothert, 2021. "Optimal federal transfers during uncoordinated response to a pandemic," GRAPE Working Papers 58, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    16. Jacek Rothert, 2022. "Optimal federal transfers during uncoordinated response to a pandemic," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 24(5), pages 1124-1153, October.
    17. Okubo, Toshihiro, 2022. "Telework in the spread of COVID-19," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    18. Cumming, Douglas J. & Firth, Christopher & Gathergood, John & Stewart, Neil, 2021. "Covid, work-from-home, and securities misconduct," CFS Working Paper Series 666, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    19. Amairisa Koukia & Robert M. Sauer, 2022. "Remote Work, Children’s Health and the Racial Gap in Female Wages," CHILD Working Papers Series 104 JEL Classification: C, Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD) - CCA.
    20. Kouki, Amairisa & Sauer, Robert M., 2022. "Remote Work, Children's Health and the Racial Gap in Female Wages," IZA Discussion Papers 15072, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0278710. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.