Background: The COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by widespread childcare and school closures. Emerging evidence – primarily from high-income countries – suggests that these changes increased women’s time in unpaid care, which may be a particular challenge for women with paid employment. Objective: The paper examines how women’s unpaid care responsibilities and employment changed during the pandemic in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), specifically: (1) How did the closure of schools and nurseries impact married women’s time spent in care work? (2) How were exits from employment related to care responsibilities? and (3) How did changes in employment vary by pre-pandemic type of employment? Methods: This paper uses multiple waves of phone surveys from five MENA countries. Country-specific information on school modalities is a key covariate. The analyses present both descriptive statistics and multivariate models for outcomes of care work and employment. Analyses also include fixed-effect logit models, with woman fixed effects, leveraging the multiple observations per woman in the panel. Results: When schools were totally closed during the pandemic, married women with children under age 18 reported performing more care work. However, exits from employment during the pandemic were not increased by women’s care responsibilities. Contribution: Even before the pandemic, structural inequalities pushed women in MENA – particularly married women with young children – out of the types of employment that were difficult to reconcile with care responsibilities. These findings underscore the importance of local employment conditions in mediating the impact of the pandemic on gender inequality.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19 大流行对中东和北非妇女护理工作和就业的影响（Caroline Krafft、Maia Sieverding、Irene Selwaness）


背景：COVID-19 大流行伴随着大范围的托儿所和学校关闭。新出现的证据（主要来自高收入国家）表明，这些变化增加了妇女从事无偿护理的时间，这对于从事有偿工作的妇女来说可能是一个特殊的挑战。目标：本文探讨了中东和北非 (MENA) 疫情期间妇女的无酬护理责任和就业如何变化，具体而言：(1) 学校和托儿所的关闭如何影响已婚妇女花在护理工作上的时间？ (2) 离职与照顾责任有何关系？ (3) 大流行前就业类型的就业变化有何不同？方法：本文使用了来自五个中东和北非国家的多波电话调查。有关学校模式的具体国家信息是一个关键的协变量。这些分析提供了护理工作和就业结果的描述性统计数据和多元模型。分析还包括具有女性固定效应的固定效应 Logit 模型，利用小组中每个女性的多个观察结果。结果：当学校在大流行期间完全关闭时，有 18 岁以下子女的已婚妇女报告说承担了更多的照顾工作。然而，疫情期间女性的离职并没有因为承担的照顾责任而增加。贡献：即使在大流行之前，结构性不平等就迫使中东和北非地区的妇女——尤其是有年幼孩子的已婚妇女——摆脱了难以与照顾责任相协调的就业类型。这些发现强调了当地就业条件在调节疫情对性别不平等影响方面的重要性。