Gender gap in urban job market during the pandemic – the case of Ukraine

Presentation by Maksym Obrizan (Kyiv School of Economics) as part of the Economics Department seminar series at the IOS.

Gender inequality in job market outcomes has been exacerbated by the COVID epidemic around the Globe. While there is a growing literature on worsening gender gap for developed countries, not much is known about the situation in transition countries. We fill in this gap in the literature by using novel panel data from Ukraine, a transition country in Eastern Europe, which enacted strict quarantine policies early on. We model four binary outcomes to identify gender gap for respondents (i) who are not working during quarantine, (ii) those who are more likely to work from home, (iii) respondents who are afraid of losing a job, and, finally, (iv) survey participants who have savings for 1 month or less if quarantine is further extended. Our pooled and random effects models consistently indicate no gender gap in the probability of not working, fearing to lose job or having savings for less than one month. This interesting result of non-deteriorating gender gap can potentially be explained by higher chances of urban Ukrainian women to switch to telecommuting compared to men. Although our findings are limited to urban households only, they provide important early evidence on the effects of gender on job market outcomes, expectations, and financial security.