Mind the Gender Gap: A Picture of the Socioeconomic Trends Surrounding COVID-19 in the Caribbean with a Gender Lens

This paper provides an insight on the gender impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Caribbean. The analysis makes use of the April 2020 online COVID-19 survey that the Inter-American Development conducted in all six Caribbean Country Department member countries. We find that the pandemic is having different effects on men and women. For example, job losses have been more prevalent amongst single-females, whilst business closures have been more prevalent amongst single-males. Quality of life also seems to have worsened more for single-females than for single-males and partners (married or common law partnership) and domestic violence against women has been on the rise. Although the coverage of social assistance programs has increased substantially during the pandemic, we find that more targeting of households with single females could be beneficial, particularly as they show lower levels of financial resilience. Going forward, we recommend further gender targeting in social assistance programs and the collection of gender-disaggregated data that will allow for more thorough investigation of the gender effects of these types of shocks.