“Differences by Gender in the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic”

By Diego Fuentes

Throughout history, humanity has been affected by major economic recessions that, although it

is true that they have harmed us on larger scales, all of these have been endured in general terms.

Currently, we have just experienced one of the strongest economic recessions, caused by the

COVID-19 pandemic; now, in order to successfully bear this recession, it is necessary that it is

studied in depth, since it has many differences from the previous ones, starting with the

unexpectedness of its cause. This essay will use the source: "From Mancession to Shecession:

Women’s Employment in Regular and Pandemic Recessions" by Alon et al (2021).

One of the differences of this recession compared to others, such as the Great Recession of 2008,

is about which gender resulted with its employment situation most compromised. Alon et al

(2020) predicted that the pandemic recession would be a “she-cession”, instead of a “man-

cession”; by this, they meant that women would lose their jobs in more percentage that men,

which would be the first time it happens since all the previous recessions have affected men the

most.

After approximately a year since the pandemic began, it has indeed been women who in general

(and global) terms have been most affected. The information presented by the authors consists of

data from 26 European countries from the European Labor Force Survey (EU-LFS), US data

from the Current Population Survey (CPS), and Canadian data from Canadian Labor Force

Survey (CLFS). To determine the causes of the aforementioned, it is essential to study what

were the changes in the labor supply, specifically in employment and hours worked; according to

Alon et al. (2021): “women’s labor supply fell relative to men’s in 18 of 28 countries when
measured by employment, and in 19 of 28 countries when measured by hours worked”, this

means that in the most general terms, approximately in 64% of the countries about employment

and in 68% about working hours, women got more affected than men.

That said, it is necessary to know what are the factors that have made women more vulnerable to

suffering unemployment during this COVID-19 recession. At first sight, the authors mention the

impact of the recession on different industries and occupations; it is clear that this recession

affected different industries than the previous recessions since it involves lockdowns and social

distancing, but how does that involve women? Well, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,

the COVID-19 Recession has seen how women-lead industries in terms of employment become

more volatile than the men-lead ones, which is the contrary case when compared to the Great

Recession. It should be noted that the aforementioned was noticed to a greater extent in the

United States and Spain.

Another factor to take into account is the increased childcare needs due to school and daycare

closures. According to the authors, countries with more severe school closures experienced a

greater drop in labor supply, but once again, how does that affect women when compared to

men? The authors respond to that showing that there are larger gender gaps in labor supply

among parents of school-age children. In fact, according to the data presented by the authors,

when comparing parents with school-age children and parents with no children at all, the gender

gap goes from -4.23 to -1.57, being the parents with school-age kids the one with the larger gap.

This means that among parents that have grown children or no children at all, the difference

between the unemployment and decrease of work hours between men and women is not so

noticeable as it is among parents who have school-age children, and this accounts for almost
every country studied, even the ones that does not have such a big gender gap in general terms,

like Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

However, these two factors presented so far do not fully describe the reality of this gender gap;

in fact, the authors mention that even in the United States, where the general gender gap is one of

the largest, these factors account for less than 20% of the labor supply gap between men and

women. Here is when the authors introduce the term “heterogeneity”, which in the source is used

as the different set of abilities, achievements, or conditions that differentiate individuals, beyond

the ones aforementioned.

The dimensions of heterogeneity that the authors mentions are education, race, single

parenthood, and ability to work from home. For the education and race, authors find that there is

a relation between the level of education and the overall gender gap for both employment and

working hours, the less educated the individuals, the greater the gender gap, and specially in

Hispanic and Black workers. It is worth mentioning that this occurs especially in the United

States and Canada, while in countries like Germany the migration factor has a greater effect.

Besides the education and race, there are other factors like single parenthood that has an

influence on this gender gap, however, in this aspect the greater influence comes from the ability

to work from home: the authors state that arguably the most important dimension of

heterogeneity is the ability to work from home, since the gender gap and job losses were highest

in industries were working from home is impossible. For instance, the authors estimate that in

general terms non telecommuting workers have a gender gap between them of -12.42, while

among telecommuters the gender gap is -3.60. This stands for the most significant gap so far.

Regarding the responsibilities of workers who are parents, historically it has been known that in

general terms women tend to have a more decisive role when it comes to childcare. According to
the authors, in this time of pandemic in which many parents have been able to work from home,

this work has been made easier for parents, and especially women, but this could be a problem if

the childcare duties are unequally divided, since it would make the one with the more duties to

be less productive at work, which could result into job loss or reduction in paid hours. For

instance, parents report that for more than 60 percent of the time working at home they were

simultaneously looking after their children.

At this point, the situation in which we find ourselves immediately after the COVID-19 recession

has been described, however it is of the utmost importance to analyze the long-term impacts that

this recession may have. The authors state that due to the fact that this recession has affected

women more than men, the gender pay gap that our society has been experiencing until today

will continue to increase, which can result in a very much lower women labor force. However,

this recession will also lead to the employers to be more flexible about their workers working

from home, which could reduce this gender gap that has been present as a pay gap, and with this

recession also as an unemployment gap between men and women.

In conclusion, we know for a fact that women have been the most affected by this COVID-19

pandemic recession. Nevertheless, this issue cannot be explained simply as gender inequality: in

order to not only understand it, but also find a way to reduce it, we have to take into

consideration different dimensions of heterogeneity that play an important role in this gender

gap, being the ability to work from home the most influential.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alon, Titan, Matthias Doepke, Jane Olmstead-Rumsey, and Michèle Tertilt. 2020a. “The Impact

of COVID-19 on Gender Equality.” Covid Economics: Vetted and Real-Time Papers.

Issue 4:62–85.

Alon, Titan. Coskun, Sena. Doepke, Matthias. Koll, David. Tertilt, Michelle. 2021. “From

Mancession to Shecession: Women’s Employment in Regular and Pandemic

Recessions”. Institute of Labor Economics discussion paper series. No 14223.