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Despite its negative effects, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital development in Latin America and the Caribbean. The rapid increase in connectivity and digital services helped mitigate the pandemic's negative impact on the labor markets, especially for those with enough flexibility to continue working from home. The shock affected women due to their household responsibilities and labor market characteristics.

This paper examines how digital development may have affected gender gaps in employment and job loss in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. Using a sample of countries from Latin America and the Caribbean and various econometric techniques, we explore the digitalization gender gaps and job market outcomes during the pandemic.

Our findings suggest that the expansion on digital technologies are associated with increased female employment and reduced job losses for both men and women. These findings hold even after controlling for child care, household chores and the COVID-19 shock. Our results are also robust to various econometric techniques.

The paper leverages on unique dataset that was collected during the pandemic and the results are contrasted with existing macro data with robust results.