Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Good news for gender equality as we exit the Covid-19 crisis?

Maria Jepsen 26th April 2021

The pandemic has had differential impacts on women. Raised consciousness about them must be applied to advance gender equality in recovery measures.

gender equality
Maria Jepsen

All crises have a strongly gendered impact and none more so than the current pandemic, across a range of indicators. While the virus itself seems to take a greater toll on men than women when it comes to fatalities, women appear to have been worse affected in terms of labour-market impact.

As has been widely documented, due to the asymmetric impact of the pandemic on sectors and occupations as well as the different position of men and women in the labour market, more women than men have lost their jobs and are more likely to be among furloughed workers. Unsurprising probably, as they tend to be over-represented in the sectors and occupations that have been locked down. They are also more likely to be working remotely and constitute the majority of ‘frontline’ workers.

In addition, this most recent shock for women in the labour market has, to some extent, exacerbated inequalities that already existed among women. Many of the women laid off or furloughed are low-paid workers, while women at the higher end of the pay scale have tended to continue to work and been able to move their job to their home (contributing also thereby to the digital divide).

The closing of schools and childcare during the last year, alongside the centrality of the home for both work and private life, has highlighted the double burden of working and caring, particularly for women, in more extreme form. Survey data show that this burden, while borne by both genders, has had a much higher impact on women, by whom care is mostly shouldered. Last but certainly not least, the pandemic has further exposed the prevalence of domestic violence, which has seen an insidious increase as confinement restrictions continue to be imposed.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

Government responses

The long-term impact of the crisis, however, will be determined not only by the difference in position between men and women in society—it will also be shaped by the type and effect of measures put in place in response. And governments have responded to this extraordinary crisis in an extraordinary manner.

While it is difficult to argue that that the measures are gender-neutral or indeed instrumental in closing the various gender gaps, they do recognise atypical labour-market situations, the need for leave to care for children and the position of oft-forgotten groups in the labour market, such as domestic workers. Despite this, women, particularly those with children, are finding it difficult to make ends meet.

So while the pandemic is clearly having a strong and rather negative impact on women in a range of domains, it is also placing a welcome spotlight on the structural gender inequalities which remain in our societies. Issues such as low wages and difficult working conditions in health and social care are increasingly under the microscope, as these workers are recognised for the critical value they provide. The importance of well-functioning childcare has become more evident. And with school closures, sectoral lockdowns and teleworking, the care of children is being more equally distributed between men and women in some countries.

This growing momentum, alongside the greater awareness and visibility of the gender inequalities inherent in our labour markets and society at large, could give rise to a platform from which potentially wide-ranging, sustainable and rapid change could take place.

Two scenarios

One can imagine two scenarios. In the first, gender equality will regress as women (mostly low-paid) find it very hard to re-enter the labour market, as sectors reopen in an asymmetric, modified and hesitant manner. Remote work will become a permanent feature and women will embrace it disproportionately, so as to continue to assume the lion’s share of unpaid work—as a consequence, they will become invisible in the workplace and lose out on training and promotions. Budget constraints will bring a halt to social investment in child- and eldercare, and restrictive measures will be introduced with regard to income replacement.

One could however imagine another, more optimistic, scenario. Because the measures introduced during the pandemic have led to a realisation that many workers—mostly women and for very different reasons—are not adequately covered, there is a general reassessment of the welfare systems in place to cover citizens who fall between the cracks. This paves the way for a largely positive outlook, in which the pay and conditions of many frontline workers are indeed deemed inadequate, leading to structural improvements in both. Remote working does become a mainstay of working life for all, but with workplaces introducing measures to counteract potential negative impacts, enabling men and women better to share unpaid work.

Both scenarios are possible. Which emerges will largely depend on what steps are taken by policy-makers as we come out of the crisis. To promote a scenario with enhanced equality, gender-mainstreaming is imperative, so that recovery measures are sensitive to the particular situation of women in society. The Gender Equality Strategy provides an overarching framework to facilitate this, alongside the ambitions of the European Pillar of Social Rights and Action Plan.

These initiatives should be used as an opportunity to ensure a scenario that works best for both women and men, as we head towards a ‘new normal’.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

This article is in a series on the impact of the coronavirus crisis on women, supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Hans Böckler Stiftung.

Maria Jepsen

Maria Jepsen is deputy director of Eurofound, latterly acting as executive director. She was director of the research department at the European Trade Union Institute and assistant professor and research fellow at the Free University of Brussels (ULB). She is currently an associate professor in labour economics at ULB and external lecturer at the Catholic University of Louvain.

You are here: Home / Economy / Good news for gender equality as we exit the Covid-19 crisis?

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube