Women have dropped out of the workforce at a faster pace in states where most students are learning from home, risking a reversal of decades of gendered advancement.
Before the pandemic, the participation rate of mothers in the labor force was about 18 percentage points lower than fathers’. From 2019 to 2020, the gap widened by five points in states offering mostly remote instruction and shrunk less where traditional school continued, according to a paper slated to publish soon in Gender and Society, a peer-reviewed academic journal.
