Women and Work: A Socioeconomic Pandemic

The loss of women-occupied employment positions is so significant that it directly affects the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in some countries.

COVID-19 pandemic is a cultural phenomenon that has had a serious impact on women’s professional careers. In previous articles, we talked about this aspect focused on academia. However, nearly eight months after quarantine protocols and health measures, the female exodus from the workforce has reached alarming levels worldwide.

In March this year, 17% of women in the United Kingdom’s workforce lost their jobs, which is 4 % more than their male counterparts. During April, in the United States alone, women comprised 55% of the 20.5 million jobs lost to the health crisis. In India, 60% of people who left the workforce were women.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a marked impact on women’s jobs in the labor market worldwide. Entering November, it is notable that female unemployment numbers have not presented a flattening curve like that of COVID-19; on the contrary, the female unemployment ascent has been progressive and uninterrupted.

The declining female workforce

As the pandemic reaches its second wave, women’s jobs are more harmed than men’s worldwide. In Mexico’s case, the International Organization of Work (OIT) revealed that 50% of women are at risk of losing their jobs due to the pandemic, which will most likely widen the gender gap in the Mexican labor market.

In the United States, women abandoned the workforce at a rate eight times higher than men. India, a country whose gender gap in the labor market is very pronounced, has 49% of women who only contribute 18 % of the national economic activity because of social and labor marginalization related to their gender roles. Even with this low participation in the workforce, it is estimated that the consequent financial loss due to the disappearance of women’s jobs in the country will amount to 8% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The effects of losing approximately half of the working population are devastating, but why is this happening? In an economic crisis that is costing millions of jobs worldwide, why are women the hardest hit?

Gender roles and pay gaps

During the quarantine, families have had to double efforts to accomplish office work, domestic chores, caretaking tasks, and educational duties for their children. The situation is highly demanding, and disproportionately impacts women. Lauren Webber, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, timely lists the socioeconomic reasons behind the feminine work exodus and why women’s departure from the workforce is numerically higher than men’s.

Gender roles and conservative cultures are two of the main culprits behind the increasing numbers of women worldwide losing their jobs or being forced to quit. In every household, especially those with children, women have taken on most of the unpaid but necessary work to keep society running, starting with household, parenting, and educational activities.

Before the pandemic, women already spent a much higher percentage of their time doing domestic chores, approximately four to five hours daily, while 74 % of the men did not invest more than an hour a day in this type of work.

In a pandemic era, domestic and parenting needs have increased considerably. Both men and women are spending more time at home performing these tasks. However, the distribution remains uneven: 68 % of the women continue to spend more time on these activities, while only 40% of men put in equal household work hours. On the other hand, the percentage of time spent on childcare and education is a little more balanced: 61% of women use more time for these activities than 51% of their male peers.

A second important reason for the relegation of women to the domestic dimension is the gap in pay and opportunity-to-advance based on gender. Millions of families worldwide have made the difficult decision that the person who earns the most becomes the head-of-the-family and takes the paid job. In most cases, especially in heteronormative couples, this person is almost always the man.

According to Payscale statistics, women earn 81 to 98 cents for every dollar earned by their male colleagues, not counting the reduced pay given to racial or social minorities. For example, in the United States, Latina women earn 55 cents for every dollar earned by a white male colleague. Native American women earn 60 cents under the same context, and African-American women earn 63 cents for every dollar earned by white males in similar positions.

Setting aside the social injustice that this represents, it cannot be debated that in the labor market, male work is tabulated higher than the females even within the same department or between two elements with the same training, capacities, functions, and jobs. Each family will lose more money if they sacrifice the work of the highest-paid person. Because of this long history of gender-based pay gaps, men are more likely to be the biggest earners in a family. Consequently, women’s paid work disappears at a higher rate during a crisis like this.

It may seem the lesser of two evils or the scenario where less is lost in the short term. However, the wave produced by the replication of this decision in millions of households will have notable effects on many countries’ national economies and global poverty levels projected by 2030, which will seriously affect women who are now pushed out of the work sphere.

Do you think there is a gender-based labor gap and that the pandemic is aggravating it? Do you live in a household where the women’s paid work was hit disproportionately or where women do most of the household chores? What has been your experience with this? Tell us in the comments.

Translation by Daniel Wetta.

Sofía García-Bullé

Share

This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0