THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 LOCKDOWN ON THE GENDER GAP IN THE ITALIAN LABOUR MARKET

Giulia Bettin, Isabella Giorgetti and Stefano Staffolani
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Mariano Steinert ()

No 460, Working Papers from Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali

Abstract: We study the gendered impact of the nationwide lockdown (March-May 2020) due to the Covid-19 pandemic on the Italian labour market. By using Labour Force Survey data on the first three quarters of 2020, we define a Triple Difference-in-Differences (DDD) strategy by exploiting the exact timing of the lockdown implementation. We found that in non essential sectors (treated group) the lockdown enlarged pre-existent gender inequalities in the extensive margin of labour force participation: the probability of job loss got 0.7 p.p. higher among female workers compared to their male counterparts, and this difference was mainly detected during the reopening period rather than in the strict lockdown phase. The probability to benefit from the wage guarantee fund (CIG) was also higher for female compared to male treated workers (3.6 p.p.), both during the lockdown and in the reopening phase. This is a great change with respect to the past, when men had always been more likely to benefit from this measure due to the fact that CIG application was traditionally restricted to male-dominated sectors of employment. On the other hand, no significant gender differences emerged among the treated group either on the intensive margin, in terms of working hours, or in terms of remote working, at least in the medium-term.

Keywords: Covid-19; lockdown; labour market; gender gap; difference-indifferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D04 J16 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 70
Date: 2022-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-gen and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://docs.dises.univpm.it/web/quaderni/pdf/460.pdf First version, 2022 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of Covid-19 lockdown on the gender gap in the Italian labour market (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:anc:wpaper:460

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maurizio Mariotti ().