Fact check
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), 114 million full-time positions were lost worldwide in 2020 due to job losses. You can find out here whether women or men were more likely to be affected.
Is it true that the corona pandemic has hit women harder on the job market?
Figures from the International Labor Organization (ILO) on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the labor market show that an estimated 8.8 percent of global working hours were lost last year compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. This corresponds to the equivalent of 225 million full-time positions. Around half of the lost working hours are due to reduced working hours, such as short-time work. For the other half, the equivalent of 114 million jobs, job losses were responsible, that is, people lost their jobs or withdrew from the labor market, i.e. given up their work.
According to the ILO, women on the labor market are much more affected by the pandemic: 5.0 percent of all employed women have lost their jobs, while it was 3.9 percent for men. As a result of the pandemic, women are more likely to leave the labor market and suffer more losses in income.
One of the reasons for this is that, according to the ILO, 40.0 percent of all employed women (men: 36.6 percent) work in areas that are particularly hard hit by the consequences of the corona pandemic, such as retail, tourism or in of gastronomy. Of the women employed in these areas, 42 percent (men 32 percent) are in so-called informal employment relationships, which means that they are not or only insufficiently protected under labor law and social security. For example, they usually have no employment contracts or only those of short duration, no health insurance and no protection against dismissal.
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“Women are punished twice in the pandemic”
In addition, women take on the largest share of unpaid care and welfare work. In order to be able to care for relatives who are sick during the pandemic or to be able to look after their children during school closings, many women reduce their working hours or drop out of the labor market temporarily or completely.
Traditional gender roles are also responsible for this. “As a matter of course, women step in when the elderly and the sick need to be cared for or children need to be looked after. But that is not a matter of course, it is a social expectation,” says Sandra Dworack, development expert at Oxfam. On the basis of the ILO data, the emergency aid and development organization calculated that women suffered income losses of at least 800 billion dollars (around 675 billion euros) worldwide as a result of the Covid 19 crisis last year. Dworack’s conclusion: “Women are punished twice in the pandemic. They shoulder even more unpaid care work and at the same time lose income.”
Sources: / / / /
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
