Gender inequalities during a global pandemic: The link between female solo self‐employment, informality, caregiving responsibilities, and quality of life 1 year after the Covid‐19 pandemic

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to see if informal, solo self‐employed women in Chile had a greater drop in their quality of life than their formal counterparts during the first year of the Covid‐19 pandemic. The article investigates the correlation between different types of employment arrangements (informal solo self‐employment and formal solo self‐employment) and the well‐being of these women during the pandemic. The instrument employed is the COV19‐Impact on Quality of Life questionnaire, consisting of six items presented in a 5‐point Likert scale format. The survey was conducted online as a self‐administered questionnaire to 854 female solo self‐employed participants, ranging in age from 19 to 75 years, who had received support from a social aid foundation in December 2020 and early 2021. The main finding suggests there is a correlation between the type of solo self‐employment and the quality of life experienced by women during the pandemic. Specifically, women engaged in informal solo self‐employment encountered a substantial decline in their quality of life over the initial year of the pandemic, reflecting a decrease of 14.97 points on the Quality of Life scale, in contrast to their formal counterparts. In conclusion, there is a strong correlation between the quality of life experienced during the pandemic and employment status. Even though employment arrangements were utilized as proxies for socioeconomic factors not directly assessed in the questionnaire, this tool proved invaluable in capturing diverse facets of socioeconomic conditions, encompassing income levels, access to governmental support, social protection, and working conditions.