What’s IR got to do with it? Building gender equality in the post-pandemic future of work

Rae Cooper and Talara Lee

Chapter 7 in Making and Breaking Gender Inequalities in Work, 2024, pp 116-136 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In Australia and globally, deeply entrenched workplace gender inequalities - such as women’s dominance in precarious work, labour market gender segregation, and the gendered division of unpaid labour - were exposed or even exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic period. In this chapter, we draw on Australian data to examine the gendered nature of the crisis and to recommend critical industrial relations levers to build gender equality post-pandemic. We find that during the pandemic, women workers were more likely to lose jobs and hours than their male counterparts; essential, frontline workforces were highly feminized, underpaid and exposed to significant stress and health risks; and that the gender gap in unpaid domestic and care work widened. Each of these risk entrenching pre-existing gender inequalities after the COVID-19 pandemic. Arguing that industrial relations represents a key arena in which to build gender equality post-pandemic, we recommend improving pay and conditions in feminized and undervalued sectors, and providing access to more secure employment with employee-oriented flexibility.

Keywords: Business and Management; Economics and Finance; Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035337477.00017 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
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:elg:eechap:23497_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().