Pandemic Pushed More Women Out of Jobs in Gender Parity Setback

(Bloomberg) -- Women and girls left the workforce and schools more than men during the early months of the pandemic, reversing decades of progress in education and gender equality, a global study shows.

About 26% of women left employment between March and September last year compared with 20% of men, according to the research, which examined data from 193 countries and was published in The Lancet.

The study also found more women had to forgo work to care for others, dropped out of school and reported violence. The findings show the pandemic's effects extend beyond health markers, in exacerbating social and economic disparities.

“Hopefully these data will reinforce the need for decision makers to act before it is too late,” Rosemary Morgan, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and colleagues wrote in a commentary published alongside the study. They cited the risk that “any progress toward gender equality made before the pandemic will be reversed.”

The job disparity, for one, is partly explained by the higher proportion of women who tend to be employed in sectors harder-hit by Covid-19, such as the hospitality industry, said Luisa Flor, one of the study's authors and a scholar at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle.

The pandemic's social and economic impact on women will endure after the pandemic, the researchers said. Child-care, which has become more costly with inflation, is likely to continue to keep women out of the workforce.

There were regional disparities in the findings. Job losses were more uneven in north Africa and the Middle East, for example. The study was funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.