# 1. Introduction

Globally, the negative socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 are expected to affect women more than men. For example, on average, the share of women is larger in the informal sector (ILO 2020), and given that the pandemic affected the informal sector more, the female working population is more likely to be economically affected. Beyond economic impacts, COVID-19 can disproportionately affect women’s health, education, and voice and agency through different channels, including increased unpaid care work, reallocation of health care resources, and increased gender-based violence during lockdown (UN Women 2020). On the other hand, worldwide male COVID-19 patients are more likely to be directly affected by the virus, needing more intensive treatment or succumbing to mortality (Peckham et al. 2020).

While the gender-differentiated transmission channels and impacts of COVID-19 are widely recognized, and there is new, sprawling evidence on the gendered impact of COVID-19, few studies quantitatively assess the possible or actual economic impacts on women through labor distribution channels and less so for women in fragile and conflict-prone countries. This paper aims to assess the possible and actual economic impacts of COVID-19 on women and female-headed households in Chad using Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model-based simulations and evidence from a household phone survey conducted during the pandemic.

Chad has a large informal economy and ranks 147 of 153 countries in the global gender gap index. The first cases of COVID-19 in Chad were reported in March 2020, and since then, as of March 2021, fewer than 5,000 cases of COVID-19 have been reported. There was also a compound health risk with the outbreak of malaria and chikungunya in 2020. The risks of the virus spreading remain high with the advent of new variants. Even though COVID-19 cases may not seem to be high in landlocked Chad (and neighboring countries), the measures necessitated to mitigate the spread of the disease, including the closure of land borders and the main airport, within-country movement restrictions, individual’s behavioral changes in fear of contracting the disease, and links to a global economy which is severely affected by the COVID-19 crisis pose adverse socioeconomic consequences in Chad as also evidenced from the July 2020 Chad COVID-19 High-Frequency Phone Survey (Chad HFPS 2020).

We use CGE model-based simulations with inputs from household living standards survey data conducted in 2018/19 (ECOSIT 4) and follow Djiofack et al. (2020) to simulate the possible sectoral and distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Chad’s economy and analyze the economic and labor market impacts on women. We focus on female labor force participation outcomes in the three main sectors: agriculture, manufacturing, and services; and production in female-owned agricultural farms. Next, we use the first round of the Chad HFPS 2020 to assess actual income and employment impacts on femaleheaded households and the coping strategies adopted by these households. The HFPS is a household-level survey with limited information on individuals. Thus, we are unable to assess the impact on women in general through this survey. It is important to note here that women in female-headed households cannot be assumed to have the same outcomes as women in male-headed households, nor are they directly comparable with male-headed households in terms of structure. Nevertheless, female-headed households comprise about 23 percent of Chad’s households and have distinct characteristics that render them vulnerable to shocks.

In what proceeds, we first describe the methodology related to the CGE simulations and the use of phone survey in section 2, followed in section 3 by a discussion of our findings in three sub-sections: i) gendered impacts in labor markets based on our CGE simulation results, ii) impacts on female-headed households 2