Effects of covid-19 on the livelihoods of rural women in Ethiopia

Abstract Background The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on people’s lives and economic activities. Women are expected to bear the impact of the impact because they are over-represented in affected sectors on the front lines of the pandemic’s response. However, no empirical evidence exists to support the effect of COVID-19 on women’s economic activities in the Ethiopian context. Methods This study investigated effects of COVID-19 on economic activities of rural women in Ethiopia. Thereby, a multistage sampling procedure was employed to randomly draw 263 rural women as study participants. Data were collected through interview schedules and key informant interviews. Finally, the data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. A binary logistic regression model is used to examine factors determining the effect of COVID-19 on economic activities of women. Results According to the findings, the most affected economic activities were remittances (94.28%), small business trade (94.06%), livestock and livestock product trading (91.30%), daily labor wages (84.82%), handcraft (72.73%), and crop production (61.32%). The logit regression result shows that irrigation use reduced the impact of the pandemic, whereas relying on remittances, market distance, and being a female-headed household exacerbated the impact of the pandemic on the economic activities of rural women. Conclusion The pandemic had significant impact on rural women’s economic activities. Therefore, governmental and nongovernmental organizations should support rural women’s income-generating activities by providing revolving funds with training. Using remittances for income-generating activities would also improve the income of rural women.