COVID-19 amplified gender disparities, hurting employment most for mothers and women of color 
The COVID-19 pandemic and related recession layered a sudden economic shock atop persistent employment inequities. Beginning in March 2020, lockdowns shuttered businesses, schools, and many child-care providers. Steep employment loss and slow recovery hurt certain groups more than others, and women’s employment particularly suffered. To better understand the gendered effects of the pandemic-induced economic shock, this brief’s authors asked where gender employment gaps stood before the pandemic, which women were most impacted by employment loss, and who struggled most to recover employment as lockdowns lifted through June 2020.
Key Findings
- Mothers of very young children (under age six), Hispanic women, and non-Hispanic Asian American women entered the pandemic with particularly low employment rates. Relative to other groups of women and men, their employment fell to much lower levels during pandemic lockdowns, with only half of these populations working by April 2020.
- Mothers of school-aged children (youngest child aged 6–17) regained lost employment to a lesser degree than fathers. By June 2020, the gender employment gap for parents of school-aged children had widened to about 25 percentage points—over 8 percentage points wider than the gap before the pandemic.
- Before the pandemic, non-Hispanic Black women and men had about the same employment rate. In the wake of initial lockdowns, a gender employment gap emerged, suggesting that non-Hispanic Black women recovered less employment than non-Hispanic Black men, though their gender employment gap was smaller than that for other groups.