ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply affected the earnings and employment of poor urban women in India. Unlike rural households, poor urban households do not have stocked food supplies, and the burden of providing them falls on the women. This study aims to understand the availability of food and financial security to urban female informal workers during the pandemic. The Periodic Labor Force Survey of 2017–18 is used to understand the characteristics of urban female employment in Karnataka. The study used a purposive sampling method and interviewed urban female informal workers (garment workers, construction workers, and domestic helpers) in Bengaluru. The findings reveal that the food and financial stimulus offered by the State is highly inadequate for the urban women workers in this study. The alienation from their hometowns and lack of support from the neighborhood community make it difficult to sustain during this phase. The study argues the need for a gendered and urban-specific policy during this time.
