Covid-19 and women’s attitude to work: commitment, effectivity and participation

Abstract

Authors try to assess the Covid-19’s and the lockdown policy’s impact on the attitude and capability of women toward work and labour force participation. Data used come from an online survey on women working conditions before and during the lockdown as well as their perspective on their post-lockdown situation.The analysis carried out relies on Item Response Theory to estimate a latent measure that captures the capability of women to commit fruitfully in their work activities. Such estimation has been used to compare how the lockdown impacted on this factor. The results suggest a predictable worsening of the women working conditions and perspectives, but they also show that this worsening was not symmetric across all the categories of women.