PANDEMIC IMPACT AND WOMEN’S RESILIENCE IN CHINA

This chapter seeks to draw a macro image on gender and COVID-19 in China through a bricolage of snapshots including academic literature, national surveys, and two sets of in-depth interviews. While our research is limited by capacity constraints and unrepresentative data, we nonetheless find that compared with men, women in China experienced more economic insecurity, heavier workload in the workplace and at home, and worse personal well-being during the pandemic. The impact fell disproportionately on women with less education, a lower economic status, a rural background, or childrearing obligations. For some women, family was their biggest source of resilience during periods of lockdowns or economic downturns. For others, pandemic lockdowns intensified the family as a site of gender and generational inequality and conflict. Structurally, high saving and homeownership rates, temporary pandemic relief, and widely accessible social protection programs helped cushion some of the pandemic’s worst impacts on Chinese women.