Technical seminar "Assessing the impact of COVID-19: From employment to household welfare shocks on the lens of gender"

Dr. Nguyen Thi Thu Phuong (Vietnam Institute of Economics) introduced the research program "The Impact of COVID-19 on Inclusive Development and Democratic Governance: a Post-Graduation Rapid Assessment pandemic in the Mekong Sub-region”

Presenting the research program, Dr. Nguyen Thi Thu Phuong (Vietnam Institute of Economics) introduced and shared research methodology and findings on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment and household welfare, from the perspective of gender. Research has shown that although the 4th wave of the epidemic (third quarter of 2021) has reversed the progress of income and labor growth, income has returned to an increasing trajectory in the second quarters of 2022 and 2023. However, the gender gap in income has increased. Signs of a recovery in employment have not yet fully accompanied the recovery in income because the recovery has been uneven. Sharply reduced the proportion of households having a slight decrease in income of 10%. Up to 1/3 of households still had an increase in income, but about 23.9% of households reported their income decrease by more than half in the first half of 2022. There were 19% of households falling into poverty, of which the proportion of vulnerable households falling into poverty was higher and the difference was clear by gender. Essential daily activities such as daily shopping, health care services, and educational care for household members were also significantly affected. This situation has improved in most activities, so by 2022, the rate of difficulties in household life only accounted for 1/5 of households. Difficulties largely fall on women's shoulders as wives still take on most of the unpaid housework. The gender gap for unpaid care work in general was 16.3 and 16.5 percentage points in 2021 and 2022, respectively. However, the gender gap increases the most to 42.7 and 66.6 percentage points in 2021 and 2022 for daily shopping.

In addition, Dr. Nguyen Thi Thu Phuong shared methodology in survey implementation and project evaluation. Senior researchers from the Institute of Family and Gender

Dr. Nguyen Dinh Tuan - Director of the Institute of Family and Gender Research moderated the discussion

Research also shared technical issues from the Institute's in-depth gender research. Accordingly, experts all mentioned the need to conduct combined qualitative and quantitative research, especially quantitative techniques on panel data.

At the end of the seminar, Dr. Nguyen Dinh Tuan - Director of the Institute of Family and Gender Studies emphasized the importance of cooperation in quantitative technical training and research implementation between the Institute and government offices, universities and international research programs. The seminar ended successfully with high expectations of support from universities and international organizations in the coming time to improve the Institute's international publications.

2023

Thu Phuong & Viet Phuong