The gender gap in the unemployment rate before and after the corona-pandemic : A comparison between Sweden and Denmark

This paper studies the Covid-19 pandemics effect on female labor market participation in Sweden and Denmark. Previous studies have various assessments on whether women were affected to a different extent than men. Studies from the United States indicate that women have been hit harder than men as a result of the pandemic. According to the Swedish data, women were not affected significantly more than men. This study contributes to the research by examining how the gender gap develops during the pandemic in Sweden and Denmark. This is warrant by the different policies that the countries have introduced. In this study panel data between 2014 and 2021 is used, the results of this study indicate that there is no significant effect of the pandemic on women's unemployment rate in Sweden while the results from Denmark is significant at a 1 percent level. The results show that the pandemic has affected the gender gap in Sweden more than in Denmark.