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Research Making the News

Coronavirus could hurt women the most. Here's how to prevent a patriarchal pandemic

│Soraya Chemaly│April 20, 2020

Because women do the bulk of unpaid domestic and care work, they are also particularly hard hit by public health crises and pandemics. And this one is no different. A study released in March described the potential consequences this pandemic could have for women’s lives and gender equality more broadly. Women’s economic lives, the authors predict, will be negatively affected disproportionately over time. […].To date, women make up more than 60 percent of workers who have lost jobs because of the coronavirus, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Citing: The Impact of COVID-19 on Gender Equality by Titan Alon, Matthias Doepke, Jane Olmstead-Rumsey, Michèle Tertilt at Northwestern and Women Lost More Jobs than Men in almost all Sectors of the Economy by Ariane Hegewisch at Institute for Women’s Policy Research

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Benefits of Mentoring for Women Economists

│Paul Fain│March 24, 2020

Has March 2020 felt longer than a century for you, too? You’re not alone. We should all take a deep breath, but we’re not quite done yet — March 31 is Equal Pay Day. This year, with a public health crisis crystallizing the inadequacies in U.S. workers’ rights and protections, the gender pay gap is yet another reminder of how women are hit particularly hard by inequality.

In observation of Equal Pay Day 2020, we’re diving deep into the gap with data and insight from Shannon Williams, director of Equal Pay Today (a project of Equal Rights Advocates), and Dr. C. Nicole Mason, president and CEO of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. What exactly is the gender pay gap, and why is it so damn hard to close?​

Citing: Can Mentoring Help Female Assistant Professors in Economics? An Evaluation by Randomized Trial by Donna K. Ginther, Janet Currie, Francine D. Blau, and Rachel Croson​ at National Bureau of Economic Research



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Everything You’ve Ever Wondered About Equal Pay Day, Explained

│Whizy Kim│March 31, 2020

Has March 2020 felt longer than a century for you, too? You’re not alone. We should all take a deep breath, but we’re not quite done yet — March 31 is Equal Pay Day. This year, with a public health crisis crystallizing the inadequacies in U.S. workers’ rights and protections, the gender pay gap is yet another reminder of how women are hit particularly hard by inequality.

In observation of Equal Pay Day 2020, we’re diving deep into the gap with data and insight from Shannon Williams, director of Equal Pay Today (a project of Equal Rights Advocates), and Dr. C. Nicole Mason, President and CEO of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. What exactly is the gender pay gap, and why is it so hard to close?

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New Research Reports

Women have been hit hard by the coronavirus labor market

Economic Policy Institute│Elise Gould, Ben Zipperer, and Jori Kandra│April 15, 2020



The latest payroll employment data for March show that women were the hardest hit by initial job losses in the COVID-19 labor market; women represented 50.0% of payroll employment in February but represented 58.8% of job losses in March. If women’s share of new unemployment insurance (UI) claims in recent weeks was driven solely by sector-level differences in gender composition, then they would have accounted for roughly 45% of new UI claims, or about 6.8 million new claims. However, relying solely on the gender composition of sectoral unemployment may lead to an underestimate of new UI claims that were filed by women. Using three states that provide direct estimates of the gender composition of new UI claims shows that the female share of these claims is substantially higher than what we estimate by using only the sectoral composition of employment by gender. ​



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Businesses owned by women and minorities have grown. Will COVID-19 undo that?​



The Brookings Institute│Sifan Liu and Joseph Parilla│April 14, 2020

There are two small business crises in the United States. The first—the sudden shock to small businesses induced by COVID-19—is acute and immediate. Our recent analysis indicates that over 50% of small businesses with employees (an astounding 4 million establishments) face immediate or near-term risks due to the pandemic. The second crisis—the structural racial and gender disparities in business ownership—is continuous and long-standing, but equally damaging. The COVID-19 small business crisis has inspired a historic policy response because the nation is facing a massive potential disruption to a well-known status quo. Structural exclusion that limits entrepreneurship is no less insidious than COVID-19’s impact on small businesses, but because it is already a status quo that’s been built up over decades, there is not the same urgency to address it—even if closing these disparities would result in millions of new small businesses.

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Federal #MeToo: Examining Sexual Harassment in Government Workplaces



The United States Commission on Civil Rights│April 1, 2020

In this report, the Commission examined the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) enforcement efforts to combat workplace sexual harassment across the nation’s largest employer, the federal government. The Commission’s review included the frequency of such claims and findings of harassment, the resources dedicated to preventing and redressing harassment, and the impact and efficacy of these enforcement efforts. The Commission also evaluated agency-level sexual harassment practices at the State Department and at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).



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Gender Differences in Professional Career Dynamics: New Evidence from a Global Law Firm​



IZA Institute of Labor Economics│Ina Ganguli, Ricardo Hausmann and Martina Viarengo│April 2020

Examines gender gaps in career dynamics in the legal sector using rich panel data from one of the largest global law firms in the world. The law firm studied is representative of multinational law firms and operates in 23 countries. The sample includes countries at different stages of development. We document the cross-country variation in gender gaps and how these gaps have changed over time. We show that while there is gender parity at the entry level in most countries by the end of the period examined, there are persistent raw gender gaps at the top of the organization across all countries. Observe that women are more likely to report exiting the firm for family and work-life balance reasons, while men report leaving for career advancement.



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COVID-19 and ending violence against women and girls​



UN Women│2020



This brief highlights emerging evidence of the impact of the recent global pandemic of COVID-19 on violence against women and girls. It makes recommendations to be considered by all sectors of society, from governments to international organizations and to civil society organizations, in order to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls, at the onset, during, and after the public health crisis, with examples of actions already taken. It also considers the economic impact of the pandemic and its implications for violence against women and girls in the long term.



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The Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that conducts and communicates research to inspire public dialogue, shape policy, and improve the lives and opportunities of women of diverse backgrounds, circumstances, and experiences. Find out more about IWPR at iwpr.org.

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