Women with children most affected by gender gap in employment during the pandemic
During the pandemic, gender gaps in the job market were closely related to virus contention policies such as lockdowns of schools and workplaces, and policies to mitigate the negative fallout on the economy such as financial support for furloughed workers. This is revealed by the survey of job markets in Spain, United Kingdom and USA carried out by the Esade Centre of Economic Policies (EsadeEcPol) for their latest policy brief “Gender Gap in the Labor Markets Impact of the Covid.19 Pandemic” (Gender gaps in the job market during the pandemic) which examined changes in employment, the impact of furlough schemes, and unemployment amongst men and women with and without children during the pandemic in these three countries. One of the report’s findings was that whereas the gender gaps in Spain and the United Kingdom were short-lived and affected mainly men and women with children under 16, in the USA they were far more pronounced and caused more persistent unemployment amongst female workers.
School lockdowns and furlough schemes
In general, the EsadeEcPol report – drafted by Claudia Hupkau, professor at CUNEF and researcher at the Centre for Economic Performance in the London School of Economics, and Pablo García-Guzmán, researcher at CUNEF — did not detect noteworthy gender gaps in terms of redundancies, although they did observe that women were more likely to be furloughed and that Spanish women in particular were more likely to be laid off due to their over-representation in the service sector, the sector hit hardest by lockdowns during the pandemic. The widest gender gaps in these two countries affected households with children under 16 most, and tended to occur during the closure of schools, decreed in Spain until late September 2021 and in the United Kingdom until the first quarter of 2021.
Hupkau pointed out that the “survey reveals the relationship between furlough schemes, school closures and gender gaps. In countries with greater job protection and shorter school closures, employment gender gaps were narrower.”
According to the authors of the report, in the United Kingdom there was no gap at all between men and women with no children. They specify that the increase in the numbers of women with children in short-time work was possible because employers felt that women were necessarily in charge of childcare in the home and unable to combine it with working. The employment gender gaps observed in the USA during the pandemic were far more pronounced and widespread. The EsadeEcPol report confirms that women in the USA were more likely to lose their job or resign and more likely to be made redundant. In addition, in the USA such differences affected mostly persons with children. Mothers were more likely to have lost their job or resigned and were far more likely to be made redundant than fathers.
According to the authors of the report, these far broader and more sustained job gender gaps in households with small children may, in the USA, have been the result of longer school closures until the third quarter of 2021 and less generous job protection schemes. In this respect, they point out that many women with children apparently resigned and had no intention of jobhunting again in order to deal with the increase in their childcare responsibilities.
However, “in Spain, school closures were far shorter than the average and robust furlough schemes were implemented for extended periods, both of which helped prevent ever-wider employment gender gaps during the pandemic,” said Jenifer Ruiz Valenzuela, senior fellow at EsadeEcPol and head of the center’s gender and equality line of research.
Joint responsibility at home and flexitime for men and women
Due to the links between the different gender gaps recorded in the job markets during the pandemic and school closures, the EsadeEcPol report warns that school closures had a negative effect not only children’s schooling but also on gender equality in employment and the home. The authors of the report point out “the risk of this wider gender gap in childcare taking root and reversing decades of progress in this field. So it is important to bear in mind the impact of flexible new types of work (such as working from home) on gender equality in the long term to ensure that women do not end up even more responsible for housework.”
For this reason, and in order to avoid backtracking on decades of progress in this field, the report recommends the implementation of public policies to prevent gender gaps in housework and childcare, for example by increasing the availability of childcare services and encouraging the equal take-up of paternity and maternity leave, both of which increased substantially and more durably during the pandemic.
In parallel, the report suggests to companies that new forms of flexitime, such as more working from home, should be adopted in equal measure by men and women. Otherwise, the report warns, there is a risk of making women increasingly responsible for housework and childcare.
