A gendered analysis of labour market outcomes in South Africa during Covid-19: Evidence from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey
Date
2023-06-22
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Abstract
The global financial crisis of 2008-2009 disproportionately affected men’s employment. As has been the case in previous economic slumps, industries like manufacturing which predominantly employed men, experienced deeper declines (Mosomi et al 2020). However, soon after the Covid-19 pandemic started spreading globally, early predictions were that women would be hit harder by the Covid-19 crisis than men, because of the kinds of sectors (i.e. industries) and jobs (i.e. less secure, part-time, not UIF registered etc.) in which women dominated (Alon et al 2020; Dingel and Neiman 2020; Joyce and Xu 2020, Mongey and Weinberg 2020; Mosomi et al 2020), and also because of their role in childcare. Growing empirical research suggested this was indeed the case. In addition, women’s employment was slower to recover than men’s as economies reopened (Mosomi et al 2020, Casale and Shepherd 2021), and pre-Covid inequalities had worsened (Casale and Shepherd 2021). The gender gap persisted, even once occupation fixed effects and the proportion of work-from-home tasks as well as education had been used to account for individual differences in workforces in the UK and US (Adams- Prassl et al 2020).
Description
A Research Report submitted in partial fulfillment of the Degree of Master of Commerce (Applied Development Economics) in the School of Economics and Finance, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023
Keywords
Labour market, Gender, Covid-19, Quarterly Labour Force Survey, South Africa, UCTD
Citation
Selman, Cheryl-Lyn . (2023). A gendered analysis of labour market outcomes in South Africa during Covid-19: Evidence from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey [Master’s dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. WireDSpace. https://hdl.handle.net/10539/38768