Person:
Gaddis, Isis

Gender Cross Cutting Solution Area, The World Bank
Loading...
Profile Picture
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Poverty and inequality, Gender, Labor economics, Public service delivery
Degrees
ORCID
Departments
Gender Cross Cutting Solution Area, The World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated: January 8, 2024
Biography
Isis Gaddis is an Economist with the World Bank's Gender Group in Washington DC. She previously served as poverty economist for Tanzania and was based in Dar es Salaam. Her main research interest is in empirical micro-economics, with a particular focus on the measurement and analysis of poverty and inequality, gender, labor economics and public service delivery. Before joining the World Bank she consulted for several international development agencies, including the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and UNICEF. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Göttingen, where she was a member of the development economics research group from 2006 to 2012.
Citations 33 Scopus

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • Publication
    Gender Dimensions of the COVID-19 Pandemic
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-04-16) de Paz, Carmen; Muller, Miriam; Munoz Boudet, Ana Maria; Gaddis, Isis
    Experiences from previous pandemics and large-scale shocks show that these crises often affect men and women differently. Specifically, the effectiveness of policy actions and the prevention of costly reversals in the progress achieved towards greater gender equality will crucially depend on how gender considerations are reflected in the examination of potential impacts of and responses to COVID-19. Not only women and girls can be expected to be impacted differently, but they can also play different roles in the response vis-à-vis men and boys that could enhance the likelihood of success.
  • Publication
    How Did the COVID-19 Crisis Affect Different Types of Workers in the Developing World?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07) Kugler, Maurice; Viollaz, Mariana; Duque, Daniel; Gaddis, Isis; Newhouse, David; Palacios-Lopez, Amparo; Weber, Michael
    This paper investigates the impacts of the economic shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on the employment of different types of workers in developing countries. Employment outcomes are taken from a set of high-frequency phone surveys conducted by the World Bank and National Statistics Offices in 40 countries. Larger shares of female, young, less educated, and urban workers stopped working. Gender gaps in work stoppage were particularly pronounced and stemmed mainly from differences within sectors rather than differential employment patterns across sectors. Differences in work stoppage between urban and rural workers were markedly smaller than those across gender, age, and education groups. Preliminary results from 10 countries suggest that following the initial shock at the start of the pandemic, employment rates partially recovered between April and August, with greater gains for those groups that had borne the brunt of the early jobs losses. Although the high-frequency phone surveys greatly over-represent household heads and therefore overestimate employment rates, case studies in five countries suggest that they provide a reasonably accurate measure of disparities in employment levels by gender, education, and urban or rural location following the onset of the crisis, although they perform less well in capturing disparities between age groups. These results shed new light on the labor market consequences of the COVID-19 crisis in developing countries, and suggest that real-time phone surveys, despite their lack of representativeness, are a valuable source of information to measure differential employment impacts across groups during a crisis.
  • Publication
    The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses
    (Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2022-03-29) Torres, Jesica; Maduko, Franklin; Gaddis, Isis; Iacovone, Leonardo; Beegle, Kathleen
    The COVID-19 pandemic has struck businesses across the globe with unprecedented impacts. The world economy has been hit hard and firms have experienced a myriad of challenges, but these challenges have been heterogeneous across firms. This paper examines one important dimension of this heterogeneity: the differential effect of the pandemic on women-led and men-led businesses. The paper exploits a unique sample of close to 40,000 mainly formal businesses from 49 countries covering the months between April and September 2020. The findings show that women-led micro-businesses, women-led businesses in the hospitality industry, and women-led businesses in countries more severely affected by the COVID-19 shock were disproportionately hit compared with businesses led by men. At the same time, women-led micro-firms were markedly more likely to report increasing the use of digital platforms, but less likely to invest in software, equipment, or digital solutions. Finally, the findings also show that women-led businesses were less likely to have received some form of public support although they have been hit harder in some domains. In a crisis of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence tracing the impact of the shock in a timely fashion is desperately needed to help inform the design of policy interventions. This real-time glimpse into women-led businesses fills this need for robust and policy-relevant evidence, and due to the large country coverage of the data, it is possible to identify patterns that extend beyond any one country, region, or sector, but at the cost of some granularity for testing more complex economic theories.
  • Publication
    How Did the COVID-19 Crisis Affect Different Types of Workers in the Developing World?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) Kugler, Maurice; Viollaz, Mariana; Duque, Daniel; Gaddis, Isis; Newhouse, David; Palacios-Lopez, Amparo; Weber, Michael
    This paper investigates the impacts of the economic shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on the employment of different types of workers in developing countries. Employment outcomes are taken from a set of high-frequency phone surveys conducted by the World Bank and National Statistics Offices in 40 countries. Larger shares of female, young, less educated, and urban workers stopped working. Gender gaps in work stoppage were particularly pronounced and stemmed mainly from differences within sectors rather than differential employment patterns across sectors. Differences in work stoppage between urban and rural workers were markedly smaller than those across gender, age, and education groups. Preliminary results from 10 countries suggest that following the initial shock at the start of the pandemic, employment rates partially recovered between April and August, with greater gains for those groups that had borne the brunt of the early jobs losses. Although the high-frequency phone surveys greatly over-represent household heads and therefore overestimate employment rates, case studies in five countries suggest that they provide a reasonably accurate measure of disparities in employment levels by gender, education, and urban/rural location following the onset of the crisis, although they perform less well in capturing disparities between age groups. These results shed new light on the labor market consequences of the COVID-19 crisis in developing countries, and suggest that real-time phone surveys, despite their lack of representativeness, are a valuable source of information to measure differential employment impacts across groups during a crisis.
  • Publication
    How Did the COVID-19 Crisis Affect Different Types of Workers in the Developing World?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08) Kugler, Maurice; Viollaz, Mariana; Duque, Daniel; Gaddis, Isis; Newhouse, David; Palacios-Lopez, Amparo; Weber, Michael
    The COVID-19 pandemic is the worst global macroeconomic shock since the Great Depression. This brief reports which groups of workers have been hit hardest by the economic fallout of COVID-19 in developing countries. Larger shares of female, young, less educated, and urban workers stopped working, with gender differences being particularly pronounced. Gender gaps in work stoppage stemmed mainly from differences within sectors rather than differential employment patterns across sectors. Among those that remained employed, changes in sector of employment and employment type were similar for all groups except for age, where young workers saw a slightly larger decline in industrial employment. Employment increased between April and October, with larger gains for the groups with larger initial job losses, but for most groups these gains fell far short of pre pandemic employment levels. Finally, evidence from five countries suggests that phone surveys give a generally accurate picture of group disparities in employment rates following the onset of the crisis and are proving to be a valuable tool for monitoring differential impacts of the crisis on workers
  • Publication
    The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10) Torres, Jesica; Maduko, Franklin; Gaddis, Isis; Iacovone, Leonardo; Beegle, Kathleen
    The COVID-19 pandemic has struck businesses across the globe with unprecedented impacts. The world economy has been hit hard and firms have experienced a myriad of challenges, but these challenges have been heterogeneous across firms. This paper examines one important dimension of this heterogeneity: the differential effect of the pandemic on women-led and men-led businesses. The paper exploits a unique sample of close to 40,000 mainly formal businesses from 49 countries covering the months between April and September 2020. The findings show that women-led micro-businesses, women-led businesses in the hospitality industry, and women-led businesses in countries more severely affected by the COVID-19 shock were disproportionately hit compared with businesses led by men. At the same time, women-led micro-firms were markedly more likely to report increasing the use of digital platforms, but less likely to invest in software, equipment, or digital solutions. Finally, the findings also show that women-led businesses were less likely to have received some form of public support although they have been hit harder in some domains. In a crisis of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence tracing the impact of the shock in a timely fashion is desperately needed to help inform the design of policy interventions. This real-time glimpse into women-led businesses fills this need for robust and policy-relevant evidence, and due to the large country coverage of the data, it is possible to identify patterns that extend beyond any one country, region, or sector, but at the cost of some granularity for testing more complex economic theories.
  • Publication
    Gender and COVID-19: What Have We Learnt, One Year Later?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) De Paz Nieves, Carmen; Gaddis, Isis; Muller, Miriam
    One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper takes stock of new data and analysis to provide an up-to date picture of how women and men have been affected differently in terms of endowments, economic conditions, and agency. With regards to health outcomes, men have suffered a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 mortality, and more men than women were diagnosed with COVID-19. On the other hand, the disruptions in service provision have worsened reproductive health outcomes in several countries. In terms of education, data is scarce but there is no evidence for the hypothesis that families redirected scarce resources to prioritize education of boys over girls. However, girls report having taken on the additional care burden to a larger extent than boys, with potential impacts on their learning time. In terms of labor market consequences, women were more likely than men to stop working and have borne the brunt of the increase in the demand for care work. Businesses with female top managers have also experienced disproportionately more negative impacts. Finally, with respect to voice and agency, the risk of violence has increased for women and girls, especially intimate partner violence. In addition, women have been under-represented in decision-making on COVID-19 and, in some contexts, disadvantaged in access to critical information. The paper concludes with highlighting the importance of collecting sex-disaggregated data to understand the gender-differentiated impacts of the pandemic.