Closing Gender Gap in Attitudes Towards Economic Activities of Women

The 2020 pandemic has served as a catalyst for changes in the labor market, one of which is the problem of the gender gap. This movement of change has been noticeable for a long time, because the laws and models of the labor market are rapidly changing due to the development of new technologies and the demand for new professions as one of the main factors, as a result of which people gradually adapt to the new conditions of the labor market. In contrast to the obvious consequences for the economy and the health care system, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender equality has only relatively recently been the subject of research and a public debate: one of them has shown that female employees were struggling more than male workers. At the moment, the gender gap is one of the issues that both academics and practitioners agree on. To this end, scholars even proposed to call this crisis “schecession”: saying that telecommuting and flexible contracts can help female workers to save their jobs during the pandemic.1 According to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute, more than half of all redundancies due to the pandemic are women, who make up only 39% of the total number of employees. Gender gap also negatively affects the economy as a whole, in particular the labor market. Thus, in May 2020, the head of the National Bank of Ukraine named two of the top five problems in the labor market as low productivity and low participation of women in the labor force.