Berniell Inés, Gasparini Leonardo, Marchionni Mariana, Viollaz Mariana
CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata, Argentina.
CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-Universidad Nacional de La Plata and CONICET, La Plata, Argentina.
Rev Econ Househ. 2023 Feb 16:1-24. doi: 10.1007/s11150-023-09648-8.
Asymmetry in childcare responsibilities is one of the main reasons behind gender gaps in the labor market. In that context, the ability to work from home may alleviate the hindrances of women with children to participate in the labor market. We study these issues in Latin America, a region with wide gender gaps, in the framework of a major shock that severely affected employment: the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we estimate models of job loss exploiting microdata from the World Bank's High-Frequency Phone Surveys conducted immediately after the onset of the pandemic. We find that the mitigating effect of working from home on the severity of job losses was especially relevant for women with children. The results are consistent with a plausible mechanism: due to the traditional distribution of childcare responsibilities within the household, women with children were more likely to stay home during school closures, and therefore the ability to work from home was crucial for them to keep their jobs.
育儿责任的不对称是劳动力市场性别差距背后的主要原因之一。在这种背景下，居家工作的能力可能会减轻有孩子的女性参与劳动力市场的障碍。我们在拉丁美洲这个性别差距巨大的地区，在一场严重影响就业的重大冲击——新冠疫情的框架下研究这些问题。具体而言，我们利用疫情爆发后立即进行的世界银行高频电话调查的微观数据来估计失业模型。我们发现，居家工作对失业严重程度的缓解作用对有孩子的女性尤为重要。这些结果与一个合理的机制相一致：由于家庭中育儿责任的传统分配，有孩子的女性在学校停课期间更有可能留在家中，因此居家工作的能力对她们保住工作至关重要。
