A common narrative is that COVID-19 has had an adverse impact on women’s career. For example, at the recent HR Tech Conference in Las Vegas, Rebecca Henderson, CEO of Randstad Global Business, shared how “women were making great strides toward equity [and] increasingly achieving higher-level jobs.” (1) However, COVID-19 ended that progress due to the disproportionately high number of women losing jobs. “Unfortunately, that progress was fragile,” Henderson said.
However, a closer look at the data paints a different picture. The job loss caused by COVID-19 was not even across all industries. Rather, there was a large variance between industries. (2) Two of the industries hit hardest were Education and Health Services, and Leisure and Hospitality, where women comprise the majority of workers. (3) And most jobs in these industries are lower-wage.
In contrast a recent study from McKinsey and Lean In suggests a different outcome for women in professional jobs. “For all the change brought on by the pandemic, women in white-collar roles still made strides at nearly every level of U.S. companies last year…” (4). “The proportion of women in the corporate workforce didn’t decline significantly last year, and the number of women holding some senior roles increased…”
This is not to say that the pandemic has been easy on women in professional jobs. Rather, the pandemic has taken a toll and professional “women are more burned out than they were last year”
Although professional women have not left their careers in large numbers due to the pandemic, they have and are moving to companies that provide more flexibility, such as continuing to allow a hybrid work arrangement.
Most companies have adapted to the need for flexibility by providing more paid time off, flexible work hours, and support for parents. (5)
As jobs return to the lower-wage industries like Education and Health Services, and Leisure and Hospitality, it may become challenging to encourage women to return to those jobs. There have been many suggestions on how to do that. Here is one inside-the-box suggestion that may be most effective: offer higher pay.
(1) https://hrexecutive.com/hr-tech-number-of-the-day-womens-lost-income/
(2) https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-2020-employment-report/
(3) https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat18.htm
(4) https://www.wsj.com/articles/womens-careers-pandemic-toll-11632520837 (requires subscription)
(5) https://womenintheworkplace.com/