Women dominate the industries that have been clobbered by the pandemic
According to a new report by the Royal Bank of Canada, the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic have disproportionately affected women. Even though the country’s economy had experienced a slow, steady recovery prior to the current uptick in coronavirus infections, Canada’s women have not re-entered the workforce with the speed with which they left it.
RBC’s report said that more than 20,000 Canadian women departed the labour market from February to October, mainly due to the demands of attending to their children during the worst of the coronavirus outbreak. During the same period, approximately 68,000 Canadian men joined the workforce, The Canadian Press reported.
The largest declines in employment were seen in women ages 20 to 24, as well as women ages 35 to 39. RBC said that women with children younger than six years old represented nearly two-thirds of those who left employment during the pandemic, despite accounting for only 41% of the national workforce.
Aggravating the issue is that women are overrepresented in the hospitality, retail, and arts industries, sectors that have struggled to recover from the first phase of pandemic-driven lockdowns. Unlike other corners of the economy, women working these sectors provide few options for remote work.
“Things are not getting tremendously better at this stage, so they may have just temporarily opted out of the labour force while they try to figure out what they’re going to do next,” said Dawn Desjardins, RBC deputy chief economist and author of the report. “Also, we have seen a reduction in capacity for day cares – and so for women who are working and have young children, that also seems to be playing into this.”
The trend of fewer women working could have dire implications for the shape of Canada’s near-term recovery.
“We need to see women come back into the labour market in order to ensure that our economy can hit the stronger growth rates as we go forward,” Desjardins said.
