How COVID-19 worsened gender inequality in the U.S. workforce
The pandemic has left millions of people across the United States unemployed. But survey data show that women have been particularly hard-hit, researchers report in the August Socius. Those gender disparities largely persisted even when the researchers zoomed in on households where men and women both held jobs that could be completed at home. “Life got harder for everybody, but it got a lot harder for women than it did for men,” says William Scarborough, a sociologist at the University of North Texas in Denton. Sign up for e-mail updates on the latest coronavirus news and research Scarborough and colleagues compared U.S. Census Bureau surveys on labor market trends for married heterosexual couples from February and April, the months just before and after stay-at-home orders began. While unemployment increased for all groups, women with no kids were the hardest hit, with unemployment increasing from 2 percent in February to 13.6 percent in April....