Abstract/Summary

Although the movement towards gender equality in the labour market has slowed in recent decades, a long-term view over the 20th century shows the significant narrowing of the gender employment gap in the UK, a result of the increases in women’s labour force participation and employment combined with falling attachment to the labour force among men. It is too early to assess with precision the extent to which these patterns will be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic but emerging evidence and informed speculation do suggest that there will be important distributional consequences. Various studies, produced at an unprecedented rate, are pointing out that the effects of COVID-19 are not felt equally across the population; on the contrary labour market inequalities appear to be growing in some dimensions and there are reasons to believe that they will grow more substantially in the medium term.