After more than a year of on-again, off-again school and day care closures around the world, there’s not a doubt as to who has borne the brunt of the caregiving burden: mothers. We saw mothers working out of their bathtubs with their children playing nearby; we saw children interrupting their mothers on live television; we heard mothers scream into the void.
As a result, millions of women — particularly those with children — were either pushed out of their jobs or were forced to downsize their careers, spurring what many economists are calling the world’s first “she-cession.”
In the U.S., White House policy advisers and members of Congress have held up women’s enormous job losses as an urgent reason to expand investment in child care by historic proportions, which they argue will jump-start the recovery.
But a new study published in April by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which analyzed employment figures in 28 developed countries in North America and Europe, presents a more nuanced picture of the damage. The sudden collapse of child care did indeed upend the global economy, but the authors note that other factors, like labor protections or the ability to work remotely, played equally significant roles in overall female employment.
The economic damage was worse for women in almost every country analyzed: The supply of women in the labor force, compared with men, fell in 18 of the 28 countries. But the gender gaps in employment widened the most in Canada and the U.S., said Matthias Doepke, an author of the study and an economist at Northwestern University.
