Financial crises and female work

The worst social consequences of the 2007-08 financial crisis and subsequent (2008-09) global recession are being felt this year (2010), because of the usual delays in the labour market effects. The impact is deeper on the weakest segments of the labour market: young people, old workers and vulnerable employment in general. In this paper, we focus on the extent of the impact of financial crises on female labour force, which has been particularly hurt by the crisis. The impact is more significant on labour force participation rates than on unemployment rates, since after crisis women move to informal activities or retire from the labour market. After a review of the existing literature and a discussion of very recent data on labour market dynamics, with a special focus on the gender effects, we present new econometric results on the impact of past financial crises on female labour force participation and female unemployment. We empirically investigate this relationship by employing...