Intersectional analysis of the labour market impacts of COVID on women with young children and in low-skilled jobs
Abstract
Purpose
This paper analyzes the differential experiences of women in the Canadian labour market who hold lower-skilled jobs and have school-age children during two waves of Covid compared with more typical conditions pre-pandemic. The article seeks to test the hypothesis that workers at the intersection of womanhood, motherhood and precarious employment would endure even more disadvantageous labour market outcomes during the Covid pandemic than they did prior to it.
Design/methodology/approach
We employ a Gender-Based Plus (GBA+) and intersectionality lens to examine the differential effect of Covid on the effect of the trifecta of being a woman in a lower-skilled job and facing a motherhood penalty from school-age children. We use a Difference-in-Difference framework with Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS) data to examine the differential effect of two waves of Covid on three labour market outcomes: employment, hours worked and hourly wages.
Findings
We find that being a woman in a lower-skilled job with school-age children is associated with lower employment, hours worked and wages in normal times compared to males in those same situations. Such women also face the most severe adjustment consequence from the Covid shock, with that adjustment concentrated on the margin of employment and restricted to the First Wave and not the subsequent Omicron Wave.
Originality/value
The paper studies a specific intersectional group, assesses pre-pandemic, peak-pandemic and late-pandemic differences in labour market outcomes and runs separate estimations for different job skill levels. We also study a more comprehensive list of labour market outcomes than most studies of a similar nature.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding: Financial support from the Stephen Jarislowsky Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (890-2020-0051), Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency Applied Research Fund and National Social Sciences Research Fund of China (16BGL097) is gratefully acknowledged.
Conflict of interest: The authors declared that they have no conflict of interest.
Citation
Fang, T., Gunderson, M., Ha, V. and Ming, H. (2024), "Intersectional analysis of the labour market impacts of COVID on women with young children and in low-skilled jobs", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-11-2022-0521
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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