Post-Covid-19 Gender Inequality in Global Employment: A Difference-In-Difference Analysis

The fifth Sustainable Development Goal of the United Nations targets achieving gender equality by 2030, but recent progress has been sluggish. Gender inequalities in the labor markets may have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 recession. This paper aims to investigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on gender inequalities in the labor markets by analyzing unemployment rate data of different genders of 187 countries and regions from 2018 to 2023, estimated by the International Labour Organisation. Applying a difference-in-difference model, this paper finds that the pandemic has significantly widened the gender gap in unemployment, with female unemployment heightened more than that of males. However, even though the World Health Organization considers the pandemic period to span from 2020 to 2023, the Covid dummy variable becomes insignificant when the years of 2022 and 2023 are incorporated. This is evidence that the employment of most countries recovered before the pandemic completely died down. However, learning from the Covid-19 lesson, policymakers and business managers, especially those of developing countries, should invest in infrastructure that aids working mothers, such as work-from-home and flexible work hours. As many women contribute to increasing participation in the labor force, such support to female workers will cushion the adverse effects of economic shocks in the future.