An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Professor Daniela Casale (African Fellow, 2023-24)
Gender inequality in the labour market in post-Covid times: Recovery or regression?
There is substantial global evidence to suggest that women were disproportionately affected by the Covid-19 crisis and the associated lockdowns. Studies from a range of countries showed that women were far more likely than men to lose their jobs or to work fewer hours during the first wave of lockdowns, and that they took on more of the additional care work following school closures. There has been much less work analysing the recovery period through a gendered lens, and specifically whether women’s employment has returned to pre-Covid levels at the same rate as men’s, or instead gender inequality has deepened since the crisis. In this seminar, I will reflect on the impact of the Covid-19 crisis in the labour market from a feminist economics perspective; I will describe my own research on the first year of the crisis in South Africa; and I will discuss ongoing work which tries to unpack the longer-term effects of the crisis. In doing so, I will consider whether Covid-19 was the transformative event many predicted it might be, or if instead it has reinforced pre-existing gender inequalities.
Please join in-person, or click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81857401179
Passcode: 6aSe7GF7
Please note that this will be the last of our weekly seminars that will take place in the Moot Court in the School of Law, before we return to Hope Park Square.
Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/venues/old-college-north