In a study titled « Building Forward Fairer: Women’s rights to work and at work at the core of the COVID-19 recovery » the International Labor Organization (ILO) warned that the losses suffered by women in jobs and income during the Covid- 19 pandemic will persist for the near future. Of all the regions of the world, the Americas region has suffered the most significant losses in female employment; in Africa men’s employment registered the smallest decline.

According to the ILO, we learn that there will be 13 million fewer women having a job in 2021 compared to 2019, while men’s employment will have returned to its 2019 level. Globally and compared to men, only 43.2% of working-age women will have a job in 2021.

Even if the forecast for women’s employment growth for 2021 is higher than that for men, this growth will still be insufficient for women to return to employment levels equivalent to the situation before the pandemic.

The ILO shows in a study entitled “Building Forward Fairer: Women’s rights to work and at work at the core of the COVID-19 recovery”, that women have suffered disproportionate job losses and of income due to the fact that they were over -represented in the most affected sectors such as, for example, hotels and restaurants as well as the manufacturing sector.

Not all regions have been affected with the same intensity. Across the world, between 2019 and 2020, female employment fell 4.2%, representing a decline of 54 million jobs, while male employment fell 3%, or 60 million jobs.

The Americas region suffered the most significant losses in female employment due to the pandemic (-9.4%), followed by the Arab States. In Asia-Pacific, the shock generated by the pandemic caused female employment to fall 3.8% to 2.9% for men. In Europe and Central Asia, the Covid-19 crisis has significantly reduced the employment of women compared to that of men, leading to a drop of 2.5% compared to 1.9% for men. But it was in Africa that men’s employment recorded the smallest drop among all regions of the world, estimated at 0.1% between 2019 and 2020, while women’s employment fell by 1.9%.

For this reason, the ILO study emphasizes that « building more equitably » means putting gender equality at the heart of recovery efforts.
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