Survey highlights negative impact of work from home during COVID-19 crisis on Indian working women

New Delhi: With longer work hours and a work from home set-up during the COVID-19 pandemic, a large percentage of working women in India have been negatively impacted in some form or the other due to the work-life balance becoming worse, a survey said. According to the report, Women@Work, on the effects of COVID-19 on the women workforce in the formal sector in India, over 80 percent of working women in India, who participated in the survey, said they have been negatively impacted in some form or the other during COVID-19 with the work-life balance becoming worse. As per the report, 38.5 percent of working women surveyed said they were adversely affected by the burden of added housework, childcare and eldercare while 43.7 percent said that work-life balance has become worse. The report was launched by not-for-profit firm Aspire for Her and Sustainable Advancements on 4 March. [caption id=“attachment_9386121” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Representational image via Reuters.[/caption] Madhura DasGupta Sinha, Founder & CEO of Aspire For Her said the pandemic has had a perceptible impact on women in various stages of their lives, across different industry sectors, occupational status, work experience, and life stages. The research was conducted during the third quarter of the financial year 2020-21 on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the women workforce in the formal sector, correlating them to four variables - industry sector, occupational status, work experience and hierarchical position. The research was conducted with a sample size of 800 women across the metropolitan cities of Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar, Ranchi, Jaipur, Pune and Ahmedabad. The research had the highest representation from the corporate sector (41 percent), followed by academic (21 percent), Self-employed (10 percent), healthcare/essential Service (9 percent), Government (5 percent), Civil Society (1 percent) and others (13 percent).