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How the pandemic affected female workers

By: Helena Ortíz  9B

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COVID-19 brought many challenges into our lives that we never expected before and were not initially prepared for. Having to stay at home constantly, learning how to use technology to our advantage to continue with daily life activities, having to interact with each other only through screens, challenges for health care systems worldwide, among many other things. Furthermore, something we all heard about at some point is how, because of the pandemic, many businesses had to fire a large number of their employees due to the lack of income to properly pay them. Still, what many of us don’t know much about is how women were the ones principally affected because of this problem. On account of this, the topic we will be discussing today is the harsh impact the pandemic had on businesses and how the decisions they made due to this crisis were primarily targeted toward their female employees. 

 

As we all know, the pandemic had negative impacts on many small and pyme businesses that had been functional for a long time or that had just started out establishing themselves, forcing many of them to close due to their dependence on physical contact or commerce to make any type of income. This was confirmed by a survey called “The Future of Business Survey” conducted by a collaboration between Facebook, the World Bank, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Furthermore, in Colombia over 500,000 micro-businesses closed during the pandemic, causing thousands of people to be left without a job. Worldwide again, according to the OECD, more than 22 million jobs have been lost, some of which won’t be recovered, causing permanent unemployment in some countries. Still, not everything has been lost. Job retention schemes have been able to save about 21 million jobs, and in Colombia, as of April, 71% of the 4.8 million people who became inactive due to the pandemic have returned to work. Nevertheless, the OECD forecasts that countries won’t return back to normal until the third quarter of 2023. The main people affected by unemployment caused by this global pandemic were low-skilled workers, who are currently struggling to fill new job openings, and women, whom we will be talking more about today. 

 

Now that we know how businesses struggled to keep themselves afloat during this pandemic, we will now focus on the formation of large amounts of unemployment caused by a lack of income or the forced closure of many businesses, and how it mainly affected women and their labor participation.

Millions of women, previous to the pandemic, were already supporting themselves and their families with incomes that later disappeared due to skyrocketing unemployment rates caused by the lockdowns made during the pandemic. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 11 million women, or 55% of 20.5 million of the total unemployment rate, lost their jobs because of the global crisis that was occurring, while some decided to leave due to concerns about COVID or to take care of their family. Furthermore, according to the National Women’s Law Center, the number of women who lost their jobs during the last month was much greater than the 11.1 million that were gained, and according to a report by ResumeBuilder, 35% of 1,250 surveyed women who lost or left their jobs are still unemployed today. As stated by the same report, 30% of unemployed women say they are still unemployed due to a lack of job opportunities in their area. Still, these numbers take a whole new meaning when compared to the statistics for men. Globally, women’s unemployment rate declined by 4.2%, or 54 million jobs, while men’s unemployment rate declined by only 3%. Furthermore, the recovery of female employment lags in comparison to the tendencies observed for men. In addition to the point mentioned before, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has found that there were 13 million fewer employed women in 2021 compared to 2019; meanwhile, men’s employment returned close to what was normal in 2019. Because of this, only 43.2% of the world’s working-age women were employed in 2021, while men reached 68.6%. 

 

In conclusion, women were the primary victims in workplaces that were negatively affected by the pandemic’s impact on the extreme rise in unemployment rates. Many women decided to leave their jobs to help their families, while others were forced to leave their jobs due to a lack of income from the company to pay their employees, or the full closure of the business that offered a sustainable job to many people. Not only did millions of women lose their jobs during the global pandemic, but the female employment recovery has been left behind by almost 20% compared to the recovery accomplished by working-age men. Even though the pandemic has come to a manageable state, its consequences on the workforce are still present nowadays. 

 

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