The pandemic caused by Covid-19 has imposed a lot of changes to every aspect of our lives. It has forced businesses to close or continue digitally, and people to stay home. This, in turn, has become an instrument to modernized issues in gender inequality.

A recent study by Alon, et. al. 2020 discusses how the global economic crisis caused by COVID-19 will affect gender equality in the labor market, exploring data on the distribution of women, men, and couples across different occupations in the United States, as well as time-use data and division of labor in housework.

The paper predicts that contrary to the past recessions where sectors like manufacturing and residential construction, which are both with a highly cyclical exposure, are more severely affected, this downturn highly affected relatively stable employment over the cycle (Coskun and Dalgic 2020). Men’s employment is more concentrated in sectors like the former, whereas women are highly represented in sectors like the latter.

Aside from jobs interrupted by the pandemic, the issue of providing childcare has become a consequential problem. As schools and daycares closed and grandparents have been discouraged to care for their grandchildren due to the risk of exposure to the virus, the majority of mothers have taken the responsibility to care for their children while working at home.

Women make up about 45% of California workers, from which a huge fraction works in one of the top industries affected by the pandemic in California, such as service occupations like restaurants and hotels. Jobs, where it is more difficult to adopt telecommuting (or remote work), are also affected.

The problem of sexual harassment in the workplace has also become prominent even when most of the people started working online. According to NWLC, workers without a safety net are more desperate to keep a paycheck even at low costs and less willing to report harassment or assault, increasing the risk of abuse. Many women in low-paid jobs are frontline workers of the COVID-19 crisis and among those hit hardest by job loss.

Additionally, sexually harassing actions don’t just occur with a harasser and a victim in a physical workplace. According to UN Women, millions of women use videoconferences frequently for work purposes. Diverse media outlets, social media posts, and women’s rights experts further state that different forms of online violence are on the rise including stalking, bullying, sexual harassment, and sex trolling. Examples include unsolicited pornographic videos while they are trying to connect to a social event via a

Despite all the negative indications, it is considered that COVID-19 would bring about changes that have the potential to reduce gender inequality in the labor market in the long term. It is demonstrated by a more flexible work arrangement employers are adapting to, and the changes in the division of labor at home, and the reversal of family roles that have traditionally put women at a disadvantage when pursuing their careers.

The global crisis might have brought employment gender equality issues to the surface, but it also shed light on new opportunities that will lead the labor market to advancement for men and women as equally qualified representatives of the world’s workforce.

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