The She-Cession: Pandemic derailing women’s careers

Post Reply New Topic

We’re in the thick of the ‘shecession’.

The global economy is now in its worst downturn since the Great Depression. One of the unique aspects of the current recession is the way it’s impacting women: though men are more likely to die of Covid-19, the pandemic’s toll on employment is heavier for women. Unlike other modern recessions, the pandemic recession has led to more job losses among women than among men. While the 1970s marked the start of ‘mancession’ periods in industries like construction, the current ‘shecession’ is heavily affecting sectors like hospitality and retail.

These sectors employ many women and are also vulnerable to lockdown measures. Some effects are already visible. Globally, women’s job losses due to Covid-19 are 1.8 times greater than men’s. In the US, unemployment has intensified the most for the personal

It’s not just about lay-offs, however. In a McKinsey and Lean In survey of North American female employees, one in four women said they were thinking about reducing or leaving paid work due to the pandemic, citing company inflexibility, caring responsibilities and stress.

The pandemic recession is particularly challenging for women’s employment globally for two reasons connected to the dangers of close contact: the restrictions on service jobs, and the closure of schools and daycare centres.

Senior-level women are significantly more likely than their male peers to consider dropping their hours or dropping out of the workforce because of the burnout associated with being “always on” and juggling multiple responsibilities during the pandemic.

And across levels of seniority, parental status is affecting how women are seen in the workplace. Women who are pregnant or on maternity leave are reporting being pushed toward redundancy or furlough.

While inflexibility is a key reason that female employees are considering reducing their hours or leaving their jobs, flexible work tends to be lower-paid, more precarious and less of a stepping stone to top-level jobs. And the especially dark side of flexibility comes when workers are underemployed, underpaid and at the mercy of employers to assign hours, often on unpredictable schedules. Such unpredictability is particularly hard on the working women who now have to act as home-school teachers or carers.

Even for this unprecedented recession, history provides some warnings of the gendered impacts to come. Previous pandemic experiences, such as of Ebola in West Africa, suggest that girls and young women who leave education or employment during disease outbreaks are less likely to return than their male peers. Pregnancy rates increase, skills gaps widen, and girls and women take on even more domestic tasks as other household members stay home or fall ill.

With two colleagues, I conducted a national panel survey of 2,557 working parents between Mother’s Day (May 10) and Father’s Day (June 21) to find out. We learned that 13.3 percent of working parents had lost a job or reduced their hours because of a lack of child care. Working parents lost eight hours per week on average, or one full working day, to care for their children. In households with two working adults, we found an even greater loss of 14.6 hours per week, potentially representing a significant hit to total family income.

If history is any guide, it will be women who bear the brunt of the child-care crisis. Child-care access is strongly associated with maternal labor force participation, and child-care closures will probably lead to more costly career sacrifices for women.

The sheer magnitude of the disruption to child care during the pandemic will probably affect women’s labor force participation and earnings trajectories for decades to come. Research shows that women who drop out of the workforce to take care of children often have trouble getting back in, and the longer they stay out, the harder it is to return. Wage losses are much more severe and enduring when they occur in recessions, and workers who lose jobs now are less likely to have secure employment in the future. These effects accumulate over time as people who drop out of the labor force miss out on pay increases and promotions that come from long-term relationships with an employer.