IWD | Women's roles more 'vulnerable' following Covid

Various industries have been impacted due to the coronavirus crisis, including tourism, retail and hospitality, meaning jobs in these sectors have been hit hard due to redundancies and business closures.

Now it seems new data has found that women’s jobs are more vulnerable and prone to economic shocks and business disruption than men’s roles. Ahead of International Women's Day (IWD), analysis of the UK labour market from LinkedIn has discovered that the labour market’s vulnerability has set back progress made towards gender equality in the workplace.

Between January 2020 and January 2021, LinkedIn’s analysis found that the share of women being hired in the UK fell dramatically in March and April last year, before recovering to pre-pandemic levels. In fact, women were 45.8% of all hires in January 2021, compared to 42.2% in April 2020.

While the outlook for female hires is faring better now than in spring 2020, research suggested that there is now an urgent need to make up ‘lost ground caused by the pandemic’.