War Is Draining Ukraine’s Male-Dominated Work Force. Enter the Women.
More and more women are replacing men mobilized in the army. But there are not enough of them to make up for the labor shortage affecting the economy.
They are part of a wider trend in Ukraine, where women are increasingly stepping into jobs long dominated by men as the widespread mobilization of soldiers depletes the male-dominated work force. They have become truck or bus drivers, welders in steel factories and warehouse workers. Thousands have also voluntarily joined the army.
In doing so, these women are reshaping Ukraine’s traditionally male-dominated work force, which experts say has long been marked by biases inherited from the Soviet Union. “There was this perception of women as second-class and less reliable workers,” said Hlib Vyshlinsky, the executive director of the Kyiv-based Center for Economic Strategy.
Mr. Vyshlinsky said that Ukrainian women had long been excluded from certain jobs, not only over the physical demands but also because such roles were considered too complicated for them. Women, he said, could drive trolley buses, but not trains. “It was full of stereotypes.”
The current influx of women into the Ukrainian job market has echoes of the munitionettes, the British women who worked in arms factories during World War I, and the women — memorialized in the iconic posters of Rosie the Riveter — who went to work in the United States during World War II.
But even with the influx of women into the work force, they will not be enough to replace all the male workers who have left, economists say. Three-quarters of Ukrainian employers have experienced labor shortages, a recent survey showed.
Before the war, 47 percent of Ukrainian women worked, according to the World Bank. Since then, some 1.5 million female workers, about 13 percent of the total, have left Ukraine, Mr. Vyshlinsky said.
“The share of women currently working in Ukraine is higher than before the war,” Mr. Vyshlinsky said. But too many have left Ukraine to allow the country to overcome its work force shortages, he said.
Source: The New York Times.