"Over a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, gender equality in the world of work has worsened. Women have suffered disproportionate job and income losses, including because of their over representation in the hardest-hit sectors, and many continue to work on the front line, sustaining care systems, economies and societies, while often also doing the majority of unpaid care work. All these factors underscore the need for a gender-responsive recovery to respond to the commitment of “building forward fairer”. This policy brief provides an outlook of where women stand in the labour market after more than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic. It confirms that women's employment has been negatively impacted in terms of both quantity and quality, although with substantial regional variations. It provides a snapshot of new and continuing measures that governments have adopted to mitigate the employment and income effects of the pandemic, while warning that they are already leaving women behind. Finally, it calls for gender-responsive policies, in order to make women's right to work and their labour rights a central feature of the COVID-19 recovery."

Support: Digital