Determinants of women’s informal work during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic brought several consequences for the economy, marked by the increasing inequalities. In Brazil, the impacts were especially observed in the labor market dynamics, observed by the high rates of unemployment and informality. Involuntarily, women were mainly affected, given their greater presence in informal jobs or, because they had to leave their jobs to carry out care work, given social and gender norms. This work aims to characterize informal workers as well as the determinants of access to informal work by Brazilian women during the year 2020, using data from PNAD Covid-19. It was observed that, during the pandemics, older and less educated women and women head of households are more likely to work in informal jobs, while married women with fewer children living in urban areas were the least likely.