Gender and beyond. Employment patterns during the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy

This paper investigates employment changes during the pandemic for women and men in a country characterized by notoriously low female employment: Italy. In particular, the paper explores to what extent previously existing inequalities in employment were further exacerbated during the pandemic. Using data from Italian Labor Force Surveys for the years 2018 to 2020, we find evidence of a limited decline of employment, but a strong increase of persons working zero hours during the lockdown periods. This result holds for both men and women. The pandemic highlighted how gender inequalities in employment intersect with other socio-economic disadvantages: single mothers and low-educated women were more affected than their male counterparts, while single and foreign men were hit stronger than women with the same characteristics. The pandemic thus came with differentiated consequences for groups of persons, generally affecting harder those already in less advantaged situations. At the same time, results support the idea that women’s employment was relevant to counteract job-loss in the family, and some became the only breadwinner for their families – also exposing themselves to risks by working during the pandemic. All in all, the pandemic greatly accentuated pre-existing social inequalities in the Italian labor market, yet with apparently transitory effect at least regarding employment participation. We discuss reasons of why this was the case.