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Higher female unemployment and a greater proportion of women leaving the labour market due to the COVID-19 pandemic has set back progress towards gender equality in work by at least two years, according to PwC’s latest analysis out early March. PwC’s Women in Work Index, now in its 10th edition, assesses women’s employment outcomes across 33 OECD countries. After a decade of slow but consistent gains from women in work across the OECD, the Index fell for the first time in its history.

According to the PwC research, “the two main contributing factors to the Index decline were higher female unemployment and lower female participation rates during the worst of the pandemic. The Index estimates a “COVID-19 gap,” which compares job losses to the employment growth projected prior to the pandemic, finding there were 5.1 million more women unemployed and 5.2 million fewer women participating in the labour market than would have been the case had the pandemic not occurred.

Childcare and domestic work responsibilities played a significant role in causing women to leave the workforce. An OECD report on gender inequalities in caregiving and labour market outcomes during COVID-19 shows women took on more unpaid childcare responsibilities during the pandemic, causing them to leave the workforce at higher rates than men.

Larice Stielow, Senior Economist, PwC UK said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has made the goal of gender equality for women in work even more of a challenge. To reverse the setback to women’s employment outcomes, we need governments and businesses to lead the way by rebuilding our economies with effective policies which explicitly consider the needs of women and other disadvantaged groups. This is essential if we are to improve equality and achieve a fairer future for everyone in both work and society.”

PwC’s Women in Work Index is based on five indicators that reflect women’s participation in the global labour market and equality in the workplace. Given the slow progress made over the past 10 years against each of the five indicators, and lost ground due to the pandemic, we estimate it will take years – in some cases decades – to close the gaps and achieve gender parity between women and men in the global workplace:

• Female labour force participation rate (33 years to match men’s current 80% rate).
• Female to male labour force participation rate gap (30 years to close the gap).
• Female unemployment rate (nine years to match men’s current rate).
• Female full-time employment rate (67 years to equal the current share of male employees in full-time employment).
• Gender pay gap (63 years to close the gap).

According to PwC, effective policy action is needed to achieve greater gender equality in workplaces globally. “This means more flexible working options, particularly that address the underlying gender inequalities in unpaid care and domestic work. Policies like equal paid parental leave that help to redistribute the unequal burden of care carried by women.

If nothing is done to improve women’s representation in these sectors, PwC estimates that the employment gap between men and women across the OECD – which measures the additional number of men in employment, expressed as a percentage of the number of employed women – will widen by 1.7 percentage points by 2030 (rising from 20.8% in 2020 to 22.5% in 2030).

For the fine details, read the report at Women in Work Index 2022 - PwC UK.