Women and labour market equality: has COVID-19 rolled back recent gains?

Closing gender gaps in the labour market by achieving the equal participation of women is among the key objectives of the new Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025. Despite significant progress in reducing the gender employment gap, it has stagnated over the past few years. Moreover, segregation in employment across sectors and occupations is still pervasive. Against this background, this policy brief investigates the evolution of female labour market participation in the last decade and shows that the persisting gender employment gap cost Europe more than €320 billion per year in 2018, corresponding to 2.4 per cent of EU GDP. The analysis also examines the disproportionate effects that the current [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 crisis is having on working women, including the risk of disengagement from the labour market and the unintended consequences of confinement measures. It ends with a review of policy responses to the pandemic that have supported female employment in the short term and proposes how policy should respond in the long run to avoid rolling back decades of gains achieved in gender equality.

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