Covid-19 and gender equality

Date of lecture: Tuesday 26 April 2022 About the lecture: The Covid-19 pandemic has caused unexpected disruption to Western countries and studies suggest this has affected women more adversely than men. This is because they were over-represented in the most affected sectors of the economy and women, especially mothers, took a bigger share of housework and childcare responsibilities following school closures. We investigate the gender gaps in remaining in employment, being furloughed and pay by using the data from four British nationally representative cohort studies a year into the Covid-19 pandemic. Our findings confirm that the adverse labour market effects were still experienced by women a year into the covid-19 pandemic but adjusting for pre-pandemic job characteristics substantially attenuates the gaps. These effects are likely to have long lasting implications for women’s longer-term position and the progress towards gender equality. About the speaker: Dr Bożena Wielgoszewska is a Research Associate dividing her time between the Centre for Longitudinal Studies and Quantitative Social Science, Social Research Institute, UCL.