cover image: Gender and Employment in the COVID-19 Recession: Evidence on “She-cessions”

20.500.12592/zd7cs0

Gender and Employment in the COVID-19 Recession: Evidence on “She-cessions”

31 Mar 2021

Early evidence on the pandemic’s effects pointed to women’s employment falling disproportionately, leading observers to call a “she-cession.” This paper documents the extent and persistence of this phenomenon in a quarterly sample of 38 advanced and emerging market economies. We show that there is a large degree of heterogeneity across countries, with over half to two-thirds exhibiting larger declines in women’s than men’s employment rates. These gender differences in COVID-19’s effects are typically short-lived, lasting only a quarter or two on average. We also show that she-cessions are strongly related to COVID-19’s impacts on gender shares in employment within sectors.

Authors

John C Bluedorn, Francesca G Caselli, Niels-Jakob H Hansen, Ippei Shibata, Marina Mendes Tavares

Format
Paper
Frequency
regular
ISBN
9781513575926
ISSN
1018-5941
Pages
24
Published in
United States of America
Series
Working Paper No. 2021/095
StockNumber
WPIEA2021095