COVID-19's impacts on business activities and female workers: Empirical evidence from global developing economies

This paper empirically examines the economic impacts of COVID-19 on firms' business activities and female workers in 10 developing economies around the world. Based on a survey conducted by the World Bank, we constructed a firm-level panel dataset and investigated how firms' production and finances have developed during COVID-19. We also investigated female workers' employment situations and how they were affected by firm performance. COVID-19 indeed casted seriously adverse impacts in the developing world. As time passes, firms' production has been recovering, but their finances are worsening, and the female workers are facing worse situations in forms of higher probabilities of losing jobs and getting furloughed. Other variables such as workforce, capacity utilisation, and exports also play important roles in this process.