Gender Inequality Under Laissez-Faire Covid-19: Case of Belarus

Despite its traditional paternalistic role, the Belarusian government’s policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic was minimal. Schools and childcare remained open, but many families opted to keep their children at home. We document two major Covid-related shocks that affected the earnings of Belarusian men and women in 2020. First, in the absence of government orders people still took some self-preservation measures, and mobility decreased significantly, hurting retail and services. Second, being a small and open economy, Belarus also faced a negative external demand shock as exports fell by 11.9% in 2020. We utilize the differential timing and sectoral impact of these shocks to identify Covid-19’s effects on socio-economic outcomes among women and men. Covid-19 shocks increase the probability of reduced incomes, and the effect is more pronounced for women. Reduced incomes, and associated expenditure cuts, in turn, negatively affect mental health. We also document one of the possible mechanisms of earnings reduction for women: as many families chose to keep children away from schools or childcare, women in those families were more likely to experience declining earnings. We explore the exogenous sensitivity of families to Covid-19 to instrumentalize the decision to miss school and show the impact on female earnings.