THE GENDERED IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC: EMPLOYMENT, INCOME AND UNPAID DOMESTIC WORK DURING COVID - 19 PANDEMIC IN EUROPE.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought sudden and profound disruptions to daily life across the globe, reshaping how people work, care, and live. Compared to recent global crisis where the initial impact on employment was more severe for men, the COVID-19 pandemic crisis had a significant initial impact on sectors with higher share of women. The abrupt pandemic driven changes have raised the alarms on the potential detrimental impact this crisis might have on three crucial areas of already persistent gender inequalities on global level—unpaid domestic and care work, employment and earnings. Previous research on the gendered impact of the pandemic has focused mostly on the initial period of the pandemic and offers limited comparative perspective with respect to the contextual, individual, and household level characteristics. Building on the current literature, this thesis aims to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected gender inequalities in employment, income, and unpaid domestic work and childcare across different European contexts, and which are the main underlying mechanisms on individual, meso and macro level that shape the gendered outcomes in times of global pandemic crisis. The first study examines how the division of unpaid domestic work and childcare in couples evolved during the initial shock of the pandemic and the early recovery period in two distinct European welfare and gender regimes, conservative (Germany) and liberal (the UK). Additionally, it explores the role of couples’ employment status in shaping the distribution of unpaid labour during the extended impact of the pandemic. The results show shift towards more equal division of unpaid housework and childcare in the lockdown and post-lockdown period within couples in the UK. In Germany, shift towards more equal division is only evident for childcare, while division of housework remains without notable shifts compared to the pre-pandemic period. Despite the certain shifts towards less inequality, however, the unequal division of housework and childcare remained significant, particularly for Germany, indicating that the unpaid labour in households (particularly housework) during the pandemic crisis was still mostly considered woman’s responsibility, although the context and the individual and couples’ characteristics, played an important role. The second study investigates the gendered employment outcomes during the pandemic across European countries. It examines the underlying factors on micro-level (i.e. education, employment sector and type of contract, and presence of children in household) and macro-level (i.e. the strictness of the lock-down measures, and countries’ gender inequality levels) which shape the differences in the negative employment outcomes during the pandemic for women and men across Europe. Moreover, it explores the interaction between the micro-level characteristics and macro-level context, indicating how individual-level characteristics are of different importance in different country contexts in times of exogenous shock and crisis. The findings reveal that on individual level, better education, employment sector and unlimited job contract, served as protective factors against the negative employment outcomes during the pandemic, offering consistent protection for both women and men. On the contextual level, the strictness of the pandemic containment measures was particularly relevant for men’s employment outcomes, while the country’s gender inequality levels affected both women and men. The interaction between the individual and contextual characteristics indicates that countries with higher level of gender equality provide more favourable and protective context against negative employment outcomes for women in times of external global economic shocks as the COVID-19 pandemic. Lastly, the third study shifts the focus on the relative income changes during in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring how women’s relative income in couples changed during the crisis in a comparative country context, and how different characteristics of couples in terms of educational attainment, parental status and age contribute to varying income outcomes in couples. The results of this study suggest that there was no decrease in women’s relative earnings within couples in the first year of the pandemic in all four analysed countries. In fact, there was evident increase in women’s relative share in Italy and Czechia, while no significant differences observed in Ireland and Sweden. Governments’ support measures likely played an important role in mitigating the effects on income losses—particularly during the initial year of the pandemic. In conclusion, this thesis contributes to the understanding of the intersecting forces on individual, household and contextual level that shaped the gendered outcomes in unpaid labour, employment and earnings in times of pandemic crisis. It shows that the effects of the pandemic on gender equality are not clear-cut, and more nuanced approach can inform more effective policy responses, recovery strategies and socially just welfare arrangements that aim to reduce—rather than reinforce—gender inequalities and long-term consequences for societies.