Gender Gap in Urban Job Market During the Pandemic: The Case of Ukraine

Remarkable resistance of Ukraine has become in the world focus starting from the dawn of February 24th, 2022. While policymakers draft plans to address the consequences of the war, it is crucial to understand the pre-war labor market context, risks of joblessness, inequalities, and sources of resilience. In this paper, we study inequality in job market outcomes in 2020–2021 during another global disaster—the COVID-19 epidemic. While there is a growing literature on worsening gender gap for developed countries, not much is known about the situation in transition countries. We fill in this gap in the literature by using novel panel data from Ukraine, which enacted strict quarantine policies early on. Our pooled and random effects models consistently indicate no gender gap in the probability of not working, fearing to lose job or having savings for less than one month. This interesting result of non-deteriorating gender gap can potentially be explained by higher chances of urban Ukrainian women to switch to telecommuting compared to men. Although our findings are limited to urban households only, they provide important early evidence on the effects of gender on job market outcomes, expectations, and financial security.