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

John Bluedorn, Francesca Caselli, Niels-Jakob Hansen, Ippei Shibata and Marina Tavares

No 2021/095, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: COVID-19 recession; Employment; Gender; sectoral employment; labor force participation contribution; gender gap change; labor market change; sectoral workforce composition; Employment rate; Women; Gender inequality; Labor markets; Global (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24
Date: 2021-03-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

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