How the glass ceiling survived the pandemic

Beata Javorcik is Chief Economist for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. 

Last year was rough on optimists, but hope did have a brief moment. When COVID-19 forced office workers home — where a lot of us remain — some predicted the shakeup could bring an upside for gender equality. With families working under the same roof, facing the same challenge of juggling kids, jobs and housework, there was the hope that the new dynamic would permanently disrupt office cultures that had long privileged men and help bring long-sought balance to women’s professional lives. 

A year later we know better. If anything, gender equality has worsened for working women under COVID-19. In the United Kingdom, studies show mothers of primary-school-age children spent an average of five hours a day on home schooling during lockdown periods while fathers averaged two hours. A U.S. survey found men working from home were twice as likely to have a home office to do their jobs in as women, with women more likely to have to make Zoom calls and writing presentations from a shared space, like the kitchen table. 

That’s if women kept working at all. Among U.K. parents who were employed before the pandemic, mothers were one and a half times more likely than fathers to have either lost a job or have quit during the 2020 lockdown. They were also more likely to have been furloughed. A McKinsey report showed that a quarter of women in corporate America were contemplating a downshift in their careers, or leaving the workforce entirely in 2020. LinkedIn data pointed to a dip in the percentage of women among all hires in March and April 2020.  

In some cases, traditional gender norms might explain the lack of equality during the coronavirus crisis. But in more cases, economic decisions taken at the household level — what economists call “rational” choices — are the better lens through which to view what’s happened. As the pandemic hit, and families faced sometimes suffocating childcare and home-schooling pressures, men’s careers were prioritized, because — thanks to wage gaps and glass ceilings — men earn more.  

Four years before the pandemic, in 2016, a woman working full-time earned 86.5 cents for every U.S. dollar earned by the median man, across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Data from France and the U.S. show that in the mid-2010s, less than a third of working people earning in the top 10 per cent of salaries were women. 

The pandemic appears to be turning these persistent failures to improve equality into a vicious cycle. Women who took a break from employment during the pandemic risk being stigmatized as having chosen “the mommy track,” and dismissed as not serious about their careers.  

Some may never return to work. Some may do so only part-time. Others may simply have run out of time: The presenteeism of men in videoconferences is hard to compete with while spending 250 percent more on childcare each day then male colleagues do.  

During the past year these longstanding inequalities have been hidden in plain sight, with colleagues and spouses looking on from the next room and through screens. Instead of being recognized for what they are, however, the imbalance continues.  

That means when the next crisis hits, and families decide — passively or actively — which parent will sacrifice professional time, the women who took the larger share of childcare and housework during COVID-19 will be expected to do it again, because they were “already on the mommy track anyway.”