At the beginning of and throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, many people lost their jobs, both men and women. Since March of 2020, people have been loosing jobs. The unemployment rate has been a rollercoaster over the last 2 years, up, down and back up then back down. While both men and women have been impacted by the pandemic and unemployment, women have felt more of the effects and remain unemployed at a higher rate than men.
More recently, women lost 26,000 jobs in September 2021 alone, according to The Wall Street Journal article linked below. This decline in women in the work force is both from willingly and forceful leaving. The women who have left the labor force purposefully have left because of lack of access to child care and fear of contracting Covid-19 themselves or their children contracting Covid-19. Women with school aged children are expected to drop everything if their child's school transitions to remote learning because of outbreaks.
"[More] women want a job, but they aren't searching for one because of personal reasons, such as having school and family commitments, health issues or a lack of transportation" (Dougherty & Umauf, para. 7).
People with children/dependents need more resources to support them and their children. The pandemic has brought on unprecedented times for all, and it has highlighted the problems in our society that surround women and children especially.
For More Information:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/despite-u-s-employment-gains-many-women-remain-on-labor-market-sideline-11633827300?mod=e2tw&tesla=y
For a Covid-19 Timeline:
https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments-in-2020
Hi Shelby, really interesting blog post about the connection between the effects of covid and women specifically. Outside of just the pure physical toll this has taken on each person and their families economically, medically, and socially, there are so many connections to be made with just women. Most nurses are women, making them primarily the ones on the front lines during this pandemic.. Many of them, like you said have families, children, jobs they had to leave, extended family dependent on their care, it certainly is a crisis no one seems to want to talk about in the media.
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Hi Shelby. This was really interesting to me because while the topic of unemployment is brought up a lot, you don't really see the breakdown of the demographics and explanations of why a specific demographic is unemployed at the moment. From working at an elementary school and seeing more moms be there to pick up kids, I understand why some moms are hesitant to start working again. My mom, herself waited a bit before she went back to work because she didn't want to start working again in the event that my younger sisters had to go back to virtual and have to be at home.
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