key: cord-0818673-c4v7d71i authors: Tejani, Sheba; Fukuda‐Parr, Sakiko title: Gender and Covid‐19: Workers in global value chains date: 2021-07-17 journal: Int Labour Rev DOI: 10.1111/ilr.12225 sha: 72b183ff8aa6287fb9bc5cf25045e3c4763bbcd4 doc_id: 818673 cord_uid: c4v7d71i This paper presents a framework to analyse the gendered impact of Covid‐19 on workers in global value chains using the business process outsourcing, garments and electronics industries. We analytically distinguish between the health and lockdown effects of the pandemic, and the supply and demand‐related impacts of the latter. Our gendered analysis of these pathways focuses on multi‐dimensional aspects of well‐being, understands the economy as encompassing production and social reproduction spheres, and examines the social norms and structures of power that produce gender inequalities. We find that the pandemic exposes and amplifies the existing vulnerabilities of women workers in GVCs. 2 disproportionately and differently (UN Women 2020a). The double nature of this crisis has compounded the challenge for women workers who have remained largely invisible in the GVC literature, with some notable exceptions 1 . In this paper we ask the question: what are the different pathways by which the pandemic affects women workers in GVCs and how do gendered institutions and norms shape them? We focus specifically on women workers in the labour-intensive and low-wage segments of GVCs who constitute some of the most vulnerable groups in these networks. While it is premature to make a full empirical assessment, our aim is to present a framework to trace the gendered pathways that produce consequences for women workers in GVCs, taking account of the distinct nature of the pandemic -a health crisis combined with an economic recession triggering both supply disruption and demand contraction. We illustrate these pathways by review of available evidence from 2020-drawing mostly on rapid assessments, media and civil society reporting-in three sectors: business process outsourcing (BPO) 2 , electronics and garments. Our contribution lies in analytically distinguishing the health and lockdown effects of the pandemic, as well as the supply and demand-related impacts of the latter, across the sites of production and social reproduction. This allows us to construct a multi-dimensional view of the various factors that have been consequential for women workers during the pandemic and to illustrate how these have worked in practice. By bringing the perspective of social reproduction to the analysis of crises in GVCs, we attempt to engender the impacts on labour. We select these GVCs because they illustrate the differences between the supply disruption and demand contraction channels of the pandemic's impact. BPO was largely affected by supply disruption; garments most severely by demand contraction; while electronics experienced both supply disruption and demand contraction depending on sub-industry. These industries also differ in other ways that can help us to more fully comprehend the gendered impact of the pandemic on workers in GVCs. First, electronics is one of the most geographically dispersed GVCs with a high share of manufactured intermediate goods trade as compared to garments, which is significantly less fragmented (Rynhart, Chang and Hyunh 2016, Sturgeon and Kawakami 2010) . Second, both industries are also important sources of employment for low-to medium-skilled workers in developing countries though their share of female employment differs: for garments between 1990 and 2014 the female share of employment averaged at over 60% for 14 countries in the global south that are significant players in GVCs; in electronics it was a little over 30% (Tejani and Kucera forthcoming) . In contrast to garments and electronics, BPO provides largely white-collar jobs for a relatively more educated workforce. Third, in terms of technological uptake, the electronics industry is a leader in the adoption of robotics while apparel and BPO are at an early stage of adopting Industry 4.0 technologies. We find that the pandemic has exposed the persistent vulnerability of lowwage workers, raising questions about the viability of the GVC model as a pathway to sustainable development and creation of decent jobs. The pandemic is still evolving and ongoing, with outcomes for workers varying by the course of the spread and the nature of policies adopted. Although we focus mainly on gender in this paper, migrant status, education, ethnicity, race, caste, nationality, sexual orientation and age are also important factors determining workers' structural position within GVCs. Our objective is to present a framework of analysis to identify the main mechanisms of the pandemic's gendered consequences that is necessarily stylized, and not intended to be exhaustive. The paper starts by setting out our framework in Section II, and is followed by an empirical review of the three sectors in Section IV. The fourth section concludes. Feminist analyses of gender and work in crises use some foundational approaches. First, social and economic impacts are routinely analysed in a broader framework of well-being, which is conceptualized as a multi-dimensional space not limited to wages and employment, but also incorporating health, autonomy, agency and other important aspects of life (Floro 2019, Pearson and Sweetman 2011) . The broader framework of well-being is intrinsically important as a theoretical framework to analyse the goals women seek through employment. GVCs have been both a source of expanded employment opportunities as well as greater autonomy, voice and agency in the household for women (Kabeer 2008) . These employment effects are often seen as a positive force for gender equality but they are more complex and often contradictory. Employment has also often brought exploitative working conditions for women that violated their rights, affronted their dignity and endangered their health . Second, feminist analysis builds on the understanding of the economy as encompassing both production and social reproduction spheres, and emphasizes the disproportionate burden on women for unpaid care work in the household due to social norms (Elson 2010) . This work is necessary to sustain life and involves providing food, clean living space, emotional and material care of children, elderly and the infirm but acts as a constraint in women's participation in paid work and education. Gendered analyses of past crises consistently emphasize the heavy burden of unpaid and paid care work on women, even though the employment effects varied from case to case (Pearson and Sweetman 2011) . Third, gender aware analyses understand social and economic processes as being embedded within gendered structures and institutions that are characterized by asymmetries of power, suffused with social norms, and where men and women have different roles and positions (Elson 2010; Pearson and Sweetman 2011) . The impact of crises on workers in GVCs is also mediated by these gendered institutions including the household, workplace, educational system and social norms, which shape women workers opportunities, vulnerabilities, and bargaining power with respect to work. GVCs are marked by starkly asymmetric power structures in which lead firms in the North capture most of the profits while suppliers mostly operate in highly competitive and low value-added environments in the South. In garments, although suppliers in China, South Korea and Malaysia, have been successful in upgrading to full package suppliers, the rest of the industry in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa remains focused on assembly or cut-make-trim (CMT) that is intensely competitive and has low margins (Gereffi and Frederick 2010; ILO 2020a) . The electronics GVC consists of lead firms, contract manufacturers and platform leaders that create hardware and software technologies for products across companies (Sturgeon and Kawakami 2010, 11) . Due to the highly "modular" -standardized, codified and formalized-nature of electronics products, manufacturing firms can be quickly substituted for each other and their market power and profitability remains low due to intense competition (Sturgeon and Kawakami 2010, 14) . With growing supplier consolidation and geographic concentration in electronics most original design manufacturing (ODM)-or manufacturing along with design services-is now controlled by Taiwanese firms. The BPO industry is highly concentrated and dominated by large IT firms headquartered in developed countries along with some mature Indian firms that provide a global delivery model to customers through a network of delivery centres in low-cost developing countries (Gereffi and Fernandez-Stark 2010) . At the low-value end of the BPO chain, routine services that are easily codified and transferable predominate though higher value added services such as HR require more coordination between the buyer and seller (Fernandez-Stark, Bamber and Gereffi 2011 ). These structural asymmetries have allowed lead firms and buyers to squeeze suppliers in the South during the pandemic with dire consequences for workers, whose bargaining power was already low. The long history of notorious health and safety conditions, low and precarious wages, worker abuse, wage theft, and use of trafficked labour in garments and electronics GVCs is well documented (Verité 2014) (CGWR 2018, Know the Chain 2020). In electronics, foreign migrants are highly at risk of "forced labour" conditions -the use of violence, intimidation, manipulated debt, retention of identity papers or threats of denunciation to immigration authorities -to stay on the job. A survey of 49 largest ICT companies found little efforts being made to address these conditions in their supply chains, particularly the persistence of recruitment fees, and suppression of collective bargaining (Know the Chain 2020). In BPO, workers are made to sign punitive confidentiality agreements that make them liable for damages of at least two years pay for talking to the media or divulging information about rights violations (D. Lee 2020). In a study on call centers, Holman et al. (Holman, Batt and Holtgrewe 20007, viii) found that third-party providers tend to offer lower wages, have lower rates of unionization and employ a greater share of temporary workers than in-house call centers. Despite the high work intensity, pressure, long hours and health risks of night work, unionization in BPO has remained limited (D'Cruz and Noronha 2013). Our framework, shown in figure 1, analyses the gendered effects of the pandemic on well-being via two channels-i) the health channel and; ii) the lockdown channel. The framework traces these impacts across the sites of both production and social reproduction, and identifies gendered institutions where social norms and weak bargaining power lead to unequal outcomes for women. Figure 1 depicts our entire framework as a circular diagram with effects flowing from the sphere of production to social reproduction (and back) for both channels. In the health channel (dashed line in Figure 1 ), workplace contagion leads to worker illness and affects social reproduction due to the loss of income, decline in consumption and rise in care work. But ill health and the rise in care work in turn affect the supply of labour to the productive sphere. In the lockdown channel (solid line in Figure 1 ), employment and income losses of workers in the productive sphere affect basic provisioning in social reproduction. But the lockdown itself produces new constraints on the ability to work due to increased household work, home-schooling, gender-based violence, particularly for women, as well as restrictions on transport and mobility. It also further reduces the bargaining power of workers. Of course, these channels are not mutually exclusive and may overlap and operate at the same time though they are separated here for analytical purposes. Further, with the adoption of work from home practices in industries like BPO, the spheres of production and social reproduction are increasingly indistinguishable and create new opportunities and constraints for women workers as we discuss in Section III. Each of these channels is discussed more fully below. The structure of GVCs has contributed in different ways to exacerbating the effects of the pandemic on workers, which we highlight at different points in our discussion. The emergence of the pandemic threatens the health of the worker in the workplace directly, but also through its impact on the household. Figure 2 lays out the chain of consequences due to: (i) workplace contagion; and (ii) workers and household members falling ill leading to increased care work. Gendered impacts are conveyed through rounded nodes. Workplace contagion is a significant factor leading to factory closure and continues to be a significant source of supply disruption in GVCs. GVC structures inherently put factories under immense pressure to maintain production schedules. The business model seeks to minimize inventory and optimize flexibility, making production delays hugely costly, particularly in 'time sensitive' industries like garments and electronics. Exposure to Covid-19 posed a serious threat to workers in all three sectors as we detail in Section III, particularly where workplaces were cramped, poorly ventilated and inadequately sanitized. Contagion in the workplace has a direct effect on the health and well-being of the worker, and risks spreading the disease through the household with multiple knock-on effects of reducing consumption and well-being overall. Women are disproportionately exposed to contagion if they represent a larger share of the workforce, particularly with inadequate workplace health protections, and if they have underlying health vulnerabilities. While there is little evidence of women being more susceptible to infection, they bear the brunt of the mounting burden of care work, gender-based violence in the household, and mental health pressures. The lockdowns affected workers through two main pathways: supply disruptions within GVCs and the contraction of demand in end markets. Supply disruptions are characterized by the temporary under-utilization of capacity and have been caused by shipment delays, raw material shortages or lockdown restrictions during the pandemic. But where demand was intact, production has eventually recovered. With demand contraction, on the other hand, job and income losses for workers can become permanent due to shrinking labour demand as a result of widespread firm closures and industrial distress. It is thus important to distinguish between these two channels to assess the impacts on workers. Figure 3 lays out the transmission channels from the lockdown 3 to worker well-being. The structure and attributes of GVCs created specific conditions and consequences for workers through the lockdown channel. First, the massive global trade of intermediate inputs in GVCs makes them highly susceptible to supply shocks at each stage of production during the pandemic. This became amply clear when early outbreaks in Wuhan, China and then South Korea created major input shortages in the garments and electronics industries as we discuss later. 4 Severe disruptions in air, land and ocean freight and logistics at different stages of the pandemic also created ripple effects across GVCs (IFC 2020). Second, demand shocks tend to be transmitted more rapidly in GVCs because the decline in final goods exports affects the demand for intermediates, which may fall even more steeply as existing inventories are used for production rather than placing new orders in a climate of uncertainty (Ferrantino and Taglioni 2014) . This tends to compound the knock-on effects on workers in GVCs. Third, the dominance and market power of lead firms in the North has allowed them to shift numerous risks and costs to suppliers in the South with devastating impacts for workers, an issue we discuss in greater detail in Section III. As seen in the figure, both supply disruption and demand contraction led to furloughs and dismissals though with more severity in the latter. This led to a greater loss of income for women workers in the lower segments of GVCs, which are often feminized in terms of the number of women employed and flexibility of jobs. The material loss threatens subsistence and increases health risks. Because monetary income increases a woman's voice and agency within the household, the loss of employment weakens bargaining power and may be associated with domestic violence and greater mental stress. Gender based violence has risen sharply under the pandemic, with some countries reporting as much as an increase of 30-50% (UN Women 2020), and women are suffering disproportionately from the added stress of life (AFWA 2020b). They are trapped in lockdown with abusive partners, unable to call for help or escape to family or neighbours. In the workplace, abusive treatment and sexual harassment are exacerbated by the difficult conditions of the pandemic (AFWA 2020b). Together these effects have led to many women dropping out of the labour force altogether. Rising social and economic vulnerability due to income loss can lead to a slide into more precarious work. For women, these risks are greater as they have fewer options to obtain alternate jobs due to breadwinner norms, job rationing, gender segmentation in the industry, as well as constraints of increased care work. In the case of supply disruption and where demand was intact, new work arrangements including living at the workplace and working from home emerged. But these came with new risks including violations of the right to decent work, overhead costs and longer working days, especially for women. In the demand contraction channel, workers who were retained often faced additional health risks as social distancing norms in the workplace were not followed or adequate protective gear was unavailable. Retained workers also faced wage cuts along with an intensification of work and rising insecurity as we illustrate in Section III. Our analysis of three different GVCs reveals that gender-based vulnerabilities in employment persist and become magnified in the pandemic, regardless of sector. However, workers in industries that suffered mainly from supply disruptions due to the lockdown such as BPO, and to an extent electronics, are in a better position to protect their jobs and incomes through the continuation of work whether at home or in factories, even if it comes with new risks and vulnerabilities. The highly feminized garment industry appears to be in the most precarious position as severe demand contraction alongside an industry-wide churn lead to permanent job and income losses. The asymmetrical distribution of power and profits along the chain has meant that workers have suffered the most severe effects of Covid-19. This is amply evident in the unpaid furloughs, dismissals, non-payment of wages, workplace contagion and health risks that workers endured in the first months of the pandemic. The BPO industry was primarily affected by supply disruption and illustrates the pathways of transmission to workers in that channel shown in Figure 3 . In many verticals such as IT, telecom, fintech, healthcare and e-commerce, demand stayed intact or rose, while in travel and hospitality call volumes spiked temporarily due to cancellations but then collapsed (Deloitte 2020a; Oxford Business Group 2020; Williams 2021). Some firms such as the UK's Virgin Media and Australia's Telstra and Optus operating in India and the Philippines began to reshore and recruit workers in their home countries to cope with surging demand during the lockdown (AFP 2020). In the BPO industry, workers who were able to commute continued to work onsite at firms despite employee concerns about safety during the first phase of the lockdown in India (Reuters 2020) . Others reported having to work longer, being stigmatized by neighbours and losing housing due to potential exposure to Covid-19 as well as reluctance to ask for leave for fear of dismissal (Bhattacharya 2020) . Many workers faced a stark choice of either risking infection by working or not earning at all. While staying overnight at the workplace was not previously uncommon in BPO, workers at a call centre servicing Amazon in Cebu city in the Philippines were forced to sleep "in hundreds" on the floor in "subhuman conditions" to continue working through the lockdown (D. Lee 2020). Along with health risks, for women, being locked down along with male co-workers at the workplace also carries the risk of sexual harassment and abuse. However, strict lockdowns meant that most workers were unable to commute to the workplace leading to massive furloughs or temporary leave (Frayer and Pathak 2020); (Mendonca 2020); (Reed, Ruehl and Parkin 2020) . In the Philippines, a survey of 146 respondents revealed that four in 10 workers were on "no work, no pay" contracts or had "floating" status, which is a practice of keeping regular employees on standby for up to six months without pay (BIEN 2020a); (Macareg 2020). Only a handful of workers surveyed received any financial assistance from their companies or the government (BIEN 2020b). In the IT-business process management industry, women are concentrated in relatively lower-valued BPO and over-represented in routine, insecure and low-paid occupations, particularly call centres where their "feminine social skills" are considered an asset (PSA 2020); (Domingo-Cabarrubias 2012). Furloughs had a gendered impact on employment for two reasons: first, voice-based functions were most affected during the crisis (Mendonca 2020). Second, women disproportionately lost their incomes because of insecure and flexible contracts: 75% of employees with no work-no pay status and 70% of those with floating status in the Philippines were women (BIEN 2020a). Figure 3 , the loss of wages has further consequences. Where workers were retained, an alternative of working from home emerged in the BPO sector. In India 70% of companies achieved a greater than 80% transition to work from home within a month of the lockdown (NASSCOM 2020a). Similar developments were reported in the Philippines. A work from home strategy is likely to become part of the industry's business as usual protocol (NASSCOM 2020b) and the gendered consequences are worth considering. First, as displayed in Figure 3 , working from home will involve greater micro-surveillance through technological tools in order to ensure that levels of productivity do not slacken (Thompson 2020 , Bhattacharya 2020 . Work intensification and self-exploitation can result, especially as the boundaries between home and the workplace become increasingly fuzzy. For women who must spend even more hours on unpaid work during the pandemic, the demands are particularly onerous and lead to longer days. Although working from home may enable women to combine paid and unpaid work more flexibly, reports indicate that many are simply not able to stay in the labour force because of the increased workload during the pandemic (Bhattacharya 2020). As working from home becomes the new normal, greater confinement and seclusion for women who may already face restrictions on mobility is a concern. The work from home arrangement also effectively transfers numerous operational risks and costs from firms to workers, which affects net income and length of the working day. In crowded quarters, with poor logistical support and irregular broadband connectivity, BPO workers in the Philippines reported a rise in working hours to meet productivity targets that were not adjusted to account for these disruptions (BIEN 2020c); (AFP 2020). Most workers also had to bear the costs of high-speed internet connections and electricity that cut into their earnings (Apolinar 2020) . Companies now prefer to hire new recruits who already own some technical equipment rather than using workers on floating status (BIEN 2020c) . Thus workers need to make additional and prior hardware investments on behalf of firms to even be considered for a position. Women, who make up a larger share of floating workers, and tend to have lower purchasing power and own fewer assets than men, are relatively disadvantaged in this situation. Garments is one of the most severely affected sectors. Revenues for 2020 are expected to decline by 25-30% globally (ILO 2020a , McKinsey & Company 2020a . Countries dependent on this sector have been severely affected; for example, in Bangladesh export earnings contracted by 18% in 2020, largely due to the garments sector, which experienced order cancellations of $3 billion and layoffs affecting one million out of 3.5 million workers (World Bank 2021). Though the outbreak in Wuhan dramatically slowed down exports of fabric and other raw materials, causing a supply disruption, the GVC was even more heavily hit by the demand contraction triggered when the contagion spread to Europe and North America. Orders were abruptly cancelled, leading to factory closures, layoffs and wage cuts. The sector thus illustrates the pathways of gendered impact through demand contraction (Figure 3 ). Our analysis shows the vulnerability of workers who are predominantly female and located in the countries of the South, and the power of the consumers, retailers and global brands located in the North who set the conditions of payment and employment. The abrupt cancellations led to factories shutting down most of their operations. In addition to furloughs and dismissals, wages were withheld, delayed or reduced. This particularly affected those who do not have an employment contract such as migrant, daily wage, and home-based workers. Reports from the Asia Floor Wage Alliance on conditions in Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Sri Lanka document a variety of situations where factories obliged workers to accept lower wages than had been agreed, refused to pay workers because of factory closure, or where the factory owners or contractors "absconded or refuse to answer the phone calls of workers, leaving workers with no assurance of pay" (AFWA 2020a, 8). The consequences are dire for these workers, the majority of whom are women and support received was patchy. A survey in Bangladesh found 72% of factory owners reported they could not provide income to furloughed workers and 80% could not pay any severance pay to those dismissed (Anner 2020a) . This stems at least in part from the fact that in cancelling orders, the brands and retailers declined to pay for the raw materials and production costs, by making "dubious use of force majeure clauses to justify their violations of the terms of the contract" (Anner 2020a, 1). In Bangladesh for example, by mid-March, about 46% of suppliers reported that "a lot" or "most" of their orders already at completion stage were cancelled by buyers; 91% of them refused to pay for the production costs and 72% for the raw materials (Anner 2020a) . Over the course of 2020, production began to stabilize, but supplier factories came under continued pressure as brands and retailers negotiated increasingly unfavourable terms-cutting prices sometimes below costs of production and prolonged payment schedules-and "treating their suppliers increasing desperation as a source of bargaining leverage" (Anner, 2020b, p.1) . Some governments such as Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar and Sri Lanka provided limited wage subsidies and benefits to garment workers (AFWA 2020a). However, accounts of workers reported by civil society organizations indicate these efforts were either inadequate or difficult to access, particularly for migrant and home based workers. Even before the pandemic, garment workers were living on a daily wage, and chronically food insecure. The loss of income put them on edge, unable to meet their basic necessities, with food insecurity being "the most pressing concern" (AFWA 2020a). Though many garment factories closed, many also remained open or reopened, with some given special permission to operate in countries with a general lockdown mandate-including in Cambodia, Indonesia and Myanmar (AFWA 2020a). The use of dormitories to house migrant workers in garments is a common practice though the risk of infection in these cramped quarters is now a major issue. Workers report they were not given paid sick leave when they showed symptoms, as retaliation against workers who demanded more protective equipment and paid sick leave (AFWA 2020b) . There are fears that where there are labour shortages, workers would be vulnerable to being intimidated into taking on additional working hours. Moreover, the low wages, long working hours and lack of adequate healthcare and social protection have left workers with no savings, and vulnerable. These employment effects overlap with other forms of disadvantage. The closing of childcare facilities have been major constraints for young mothers to continue or return to work. Patterns of layoffs and hiring analysed by AFWA (AFWA 2020a) reveal that trainees, daily wage earners, contract workers, and home based workers were the first to be laid off while those living near the factory and younger workers were invited to return to work. There are also reports of adolescents being recruited as schools are closed. These effects link the reproductive and productive sectors. As displayed in Figure 3 , the return to work then exposes workers to infection while the lack of childcare facilities constrains the return to work and labour supply ( Figure 1 ). Loss of employment would also be expected to have consequences for the female worker's status in the family, and her ability to allocate resources, for example for food and children's health and education. The pandemic affected the electronics industry through demand contraction, which varied by sub-industry, but more severely by supply disruption. In fact, the industry's distributed structure makes it highly susceptible to supply disruption along the chain with shortages and delays in the delivery of raw materials, components and subassemblies. Supply disruption started at the very onset of Covid-19 with the lockdown in Wuhan followed by South Korea, which are important manufacturing hubs for major companies like Apple and Samsung (Deloitte 2020c) . The government mandated shutdown of Samsung factories in Daegu cut off supplies for screens and chips had a serious ripple effect on the entire supply chain in China, Japan and elsewhere. Lockdowns and supply disruptions led to production disruptions, combined with shrinking global demand for consumer goods with electronic components leading to reduced hours, furloughs and layoffs for workers. Overall, the entire electronics industry suffered significant losses in the first quarter of 2020 and was projected to decline further (Meticulous Research Viewpont 2020). However the second half of the year saw a rebound and the sector as a whole experienced -3% contraction in 2020 (Statista 2021) . The disruption has also led to many factory closures with loss of wages and severance pay leading to the inability to meet basic needs (BHRRC 2020). Reports by human rights organizations document accounts of workers with serious consequences for their livelihoods, and violations of human rights, labour rights and legal entitlements. In Vietnam, the effects of supply disruption and 30-50% cancellations of orders led to workers losing 50-60% of income; in Indonesia, factory closing led to thousands of workers being laid off, and without payment of severance pay mandated by law (Electronics Watch 2020a) . Worker exploitation appears to be increasing as employers threaten retention of wages, introduce suspension of collective bargaining and wage increases, and continue production even in contradiction to government advice (Weber 2020) . Most of the workers in low-skilled occupations in electronics have short-term employment contracts. In Asia, women make up much as 60% of electronics workers in Indonesia, 81% in Philippines, 74% in Thailand and 75% in Vietnam and do repetitive work that is also at high-risk of automation (Rynhart, Chang and Hyunh 2016) . The gender wage gap has historically been significant, and has been increasing in most countries (ILO 2007) . Where factories remained open, health precautions were reportedly introduced, but multiple accounts reveal inadequate health and safety conditions, with factories not providing socially distanced work stations, masks, cleaning and sanitary facilities, or ventilation (BHRRC 2020, Electronics Watch 2020a, Know the Chain 2020). They also report that health safety, paid sick leave and access to quality healthcare-major demands of workers and unions-were often disregarded. Many electronics workers are migrants, either from other regions of the country or abroad (ILO, 2007) . For example, in Malaysia, 50% of the workers in Malaysia's electronic industry were from other countries of Asia (Verité 2014) . These workers were stuck, either unable to go home due to travel restrictions imposed by the lockdown, as in India, Malaysia and Indonesia. This paper has presented a framework to analyse the gendered consequences of the pandemic on workers in GVCs through the channels of health effects and lockdown measures. Through the severe contraction of demand and simultaneous disruption of supply, the pandemic has reinforced existing fragilities in the industry with critical consequences for women workers. Our preliminary analysis suggests that the garment industry-affected by demand contraction in high income economies and the largest employer of women in GVCs-has been the most severely hit. The electronics sector was affected by demand contraction but particularly by supply disruption, which led to wage and job losses especially for migrant workers. BPO was largely and temporarily affected by supply disruption and is expected to accelerate in the medium-term as businesses expand services offshoring as part of cost-saving measures. The BPO industry also shifted to working from home fairly rapidly, workers were less exposed to workplace contagion as compared to garments and electronics where this was not possible. Many workers in these industries had no option but to continue working on-site during the pandemic and inadequate health and safety precautions in factories left them severely exposed to the virus. The large structural inequalities between buyers and sellers, and between employers and workers, across industries have meant that workers with already low bargaining power now face greater insecurity and worsening conditions of employment. Workers who occupy the labour intensive and low-value added rungs of these chains, which are often feminized, have faced dramatic job losses and income declines. At the same time, the burden of unpaid care work and gender-based violence women face within the household constitutes a vicious circle that affects their ability to continue paid work and further impairs the struggle for equality. Gender segregation in the labour market and breadwinner norms also create impediments for women trying to find alternative employment. Thus we find that the pandemic's effects both illustrate and deepen the vulnerabilities of women that arise from their role at the lowest wage end of the GVCs, and the social norms that define gender roles in the household and the labour market. The gendered architecture spanning the household, educational institutions, firms and markets means that the multiple disadvantages that women face before the enter the labour market are often amplified within it. At present, it is critical that the rights to freedom of association, decent work and collective bargaining are protected to ensure that the economic contraction resulting from Covid-19 does not turn into an occasion for the further repression of labour. Rather than unilateral measures such as the decision by seven Indian states to suspend nearly all labour laws, tripartite consultations between governments, firms and labour unions is the need of the hour (Rathi and Chatterjee 2020) . Social policies also matter; countries that already had social protection systems in place such as South Korea, China and Malaysia stand out for taking some of the most proactive steps-such as employment and sickness protection as well as cash and in-kind transfers-to protect vulnerable workers (World Bank 2020, IMF 2020, Electronics Watch 2020b) . Looking ahead, firms will employ a range of strategies to deal with the fallout of Covid-19, manage risk and build resilience to future shocks. The BPO and garment GVCs appear poised for waves of consolidation while the adoption of disruptive Industry 4.0 technologies is expected to accelerate, with Covid-19 vividly highlighting the risks of labour-intensive production. Automation appears to be more feasible in electronics and BPO than garments at the moment, where technical and economic impediments remain. Nevertheless, the frontline automation technologies that could be deployed in all three sectors are labour-displacing and would have a disproportionate impact on women workers (Tejani and Fukuda-Parr 2021) . The increasing feasibility of nearshoring or reshoring along with the emphasis on lower ecological footprints are likely to substantially reshape the GVC model in the process. To date there are no systematic academic studies of the gendered effects of the pandemic in any of the three GVCs, although reports by international organizations and NGOs cited here document some of these effects. This paper makes an original contribution by developing a framework to analyse the gendered effects of the pandemic on GVC workers and highlighting salient themes that need further investigation. For instance, further research is needed to explore how gendered norms and structures of power within the GVCs shaped outcomes for workers; whether women were more likely to be dismissed, owed wages, and subjected to unsafe working conditions as compared to men, and whether other sectors with predominantly female and migrant workers were particularly affected. While surveys show a sharp increase in unpaid care work, gender violence and mental health, there are no GVC related studies. Our framework lays out the processes and pathways by which the Covid-19 crisis produces gendered outcomes for GVC workers and constitutes a research agenda to further probe its effects. Companies move jobs away from India as coronavirus shakes up back offices The Emperor Has No Clothes: Garment supply chains in the time of pandemic Issue III Abandoned? The Impact of Covid-19 on Workers and Businesses at the Bottom of Global Garment Supply Chains Covid-Free, but not Stress Free: Woes of working from home during the pandemic The great trade collapse: What caused it and what does it mean The Gender Dimensions of Global Value Chains Gender and work in global value chains Thousands of techies in locked-down India are braving coronavirus daily to keep the world running Impacts of covid19 on supply chain workers in the electronics sector Impacts of Covid-19 on supply chain workers in the electronics sector 4 in 10 BPO workers are in floating, NWNP status during lockdown BIEN raises challengs of Work-At-Home agents, employment woes amid pandemic Gov't, companies urged to support displaced BPO workers due to pandemic Binding Power: The Sourcing Squeeze, workers' Rights and building safety in Bangladesh since Rana Plaza Hope to despair: The experience of organizing Indian call centre employees Covid-19: A Black Swan Event for the Semiconductor Industry? Covid-19: A wake up call for the BPO industry, Part 2 of Impacts of COVID The Computer Comback: PCs surge due to Covid-19 Covid-19 Outbreak: Global Ripple Effect on Global Supply Chains Gender matters in the call center industry: A review of the literature on the effects of call center work on women Protecting Chinese workers' rights during the pandemic: Guideance for public buyers Gender and teh global economic crisis in developing countries: a framework for analysis The Offshore sservices value chain: Upgradding trajecctories in developoing countries Global Value Chains in the Current Trade Slowdown Feminist Economist's Reflections on Economic Development: Theories and Policy Debates India's Lockdown Puts Strain on Call Centers The Offshore Services Value Chain: Developing countries and the crisis CEO Pulse Review: Covid-19 Impact on Indian Tech Sector Navigating COVID: Indian Tech Sector Benchmarks and Way Forward What does the Covid-19 outbreak mean for the Philippines' BPO industry? Gender and Economic Crisis 2012 CPBI -Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Activities: Final Results Indian states' decision to suspend labour law amid COVID-19 crisis is delirious policy-making not back by empirical analysis Coronavirus: will call centre workers lose their 'voice' to AI? Covid-19: India's outsourcing sector struggles with work-from-home scenario ASEAN in Transformation: Electrical and Electronics: On and off the grid. Geneva: ILO, Bureau for Employers Activities The Gender Dimensions of Global Value Chains, Issue Paper Global electronics industry by region -growth outlook Global value chains in the electronics industry: Was the crisis a winow or opportunity for developing countries? Defeminization, structural trnasformation and technological upgrading in manufacturing What If Working From Home Goes on Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Women Forced Labor in the Production of Electronic Goods in Malaysia With labour exploitation worsening during Covid, tech giants must allow workers to join unions BPO Philippines and Digital Growth Social Protection and Jobs Responses to COVID-19: A Real Time Review of Country Measures, version 10 World trade primed for strong but uneven recovery after COVID-19 pandemic shock Paper 5262. April. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/3751/WPS5262 .pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Gereffi, Gary, and Stacey Frederick. 2010