The Role of Personal Characteristics in Shaping Gender-Biased Job Losses during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of South Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, I appreciate the opportunity to review the original manuscript entitled “The role of personal characteristics in shaping gender-biased job losses during the COVID-19 1 pandemic: The case of South Africa” which has as its objective how certain characteristics associated with gender have caused the loss of employment during COVID-19 in South Africa.

The manuscript is current and novel, because in the current context, and although in certain geographical areas challenges are being met to improve equality between men and women, in other places it is still a pending work.

However, the current version must introduce some improvements that I present below in order to recommend the manuscript for its definitive publication:

1.     First of all, the structure of the document is not the most appropriate. Subsection 2.2. It should be separate from the methodology, so at least it would have to be section 3.

2.     Section 2 is in a bit of a mess. In my opinion, you should create several subsections to explain: (a) data; (b) selected variables; (c) method. Especially (b) and (c) do not have any support in the previous literature.

3.     Additionally, in subsection 2.1. Some comments are made which, in the current format, appear to be an interpretation of the results of the descriptive characteristics of the sample. It would be better if you justified that these variables were already used in previous studies and that for that reason you used them.

4.     Subsection 2.2. refers to the results, and therefore should be shown as a separate section from 2.

5.     Please comment the results after the tables. This will be useful for future readers.

6.     I find it interesting that, according to the results presented (tables 4 and 5), the variables that are significant for men and women when it comes to losing their jobs are the same, as well as having the same sign. Obviously, the value of the estimator is key to understanding the magnitude of the impact, although these are also quite similar. What explanation can this have? What is it that it detects that really causes such a big difference in job loss for women compared to men?

7.     I can extrapolate the previous question as to how it explains that despite the variations in the employment and unemployment of women in the crisis and pre-pandemic periods, the significant variables, the sign and the sign are so similar (table 2). Are these really the variables that measure the differences, or is it likely that there is some other variable that was not considered?

8.     The conclusions section does not present the theoretical contributions of the research, nor the limitations or future lines of research.

9.     In the above recommendations, consider also increasing the number of bibliographical references, which is especially low in the methods section and in theoretical contributions.

I certainly think the research is very interesting. I hope that the contributions made are useful for the authors and contribute to improving the quality of the original manuscript.

All the best.

Author Response

Thanks you for your constructive comments. Find the attached file on how we reply to all the comments. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I will make my suggestions via line numbers shown on the manuscript:

1. Line 23: "airlines"

2. Line 31: "U.S." (See line 48; be consistent.)

3. Line 33: "played"

4. Line 38: remove "ever"

5. Line 40: "varied" rather than "varies"

6. Line 42: "underlined"

7. Line 46: "used"

8. Line 48: "analysed"

9. Line 49: delete "has"

10. Line 50: "showed"

11. Line 53-54: May read: "Not only have studies about the effect of COVID-19 on unemployment been undertaken in developed economies, bu also these studies failed..."

12. Line 55: delete "has"

13. Line 57: delete "have"

14. Line 58: delete "will" and use "assesses"

15. Line 59: delete "have"

16. Line 60: "the paper evaluates..."

17. Line 61: change "varies" to "varied"

18. Line 62: "... this paper provides insights ..."

19. Line 65:  Remove "The rese of" so that it reads "The paper is divided as follows: Section 2..."

20. Line 66:  Change "methodology" to "methods" and last sentence to read " Section 4 presents data, estimates a model, and discusses the findings of the paper. Section 5...."

21. Line 68: Data and METHODS

22. Line 69: Change "employs" to "employed." (MUCH of the prose needs to be changed to past tense. I will not suggest all of those edits, but the are also found on line 71 and 72, for example.)

23. Line 73: Change "since" to "as"

24. Line 74: Change "whether" to "were"

25. Line 75: Change "include" to "are"

26. Line 75-76: "The NIDS Wave 5 represents..."

27. Line 80. Remove "It is worth noting" and simply write "NIDS-CRAM is a nationally representative survey in which researchers interviews approximately 7000..."

28. Line 85: Replace "included" with "comprised"

29. Line 86: "which were"

30. Line 89: replace "topping the" with "resulting in an..."

31. Line 97: Replace "while also" with "along with"

32. Line 103: "surveys; however, ..."

33. Line 105: insert "probably" before "due to the..."

34. Line 106: Remove "Interestingly" and simply write "Oberving..." (The reader can/will determine if it's interesting!)

35. Line 107: Remove "has"

36. Line 112: Remove "a few"

37. Line 112-113: Should read "Firstly, across all waves the number of females unemployed is..."

38. Line 115: Replace "reports" with "revealed..."

39. Line 118: "Thirdly, ..."  (add comma)

40. Line 119: Add comma after "counterparts...."

41. Lines 121-123: to read "... female and male rates we found that the gap between female and male unemployment increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. This confirms ... compared to males—a pattern consistently ..."

42. Line 130: Change apply to "applied"

43. Line 133: "... they had on the job loss of females of females ..."

44. Line 138-139. One has to read very carefully here because "tertiary education ... has a NEGATIVE effect on job LOSSES..." This kind of double negative means that having tertiary education results in FEWER job losses! The next sentence explains that, but remove "have".

45. Line 140: Change "have" to "had..."

46. Line 141: Change "is" to "was."

47. Line 142: Change "are" to "were" and change to read: "job losses both before and during the pandemic."

48. Line 143: Change "justified" to "explained."

49. Line 144: Change to "Evidence exists that temporary workers..."

50. Lines 147-148: Remove "It is worth noting that and write "In South Africa,..."

51. Lines 148-149: Write as " ... permanent workers from dismissal to the point that many analysts judge it to be rigid and probably to the detriment...

52. Line 153: "...the pandemic; however, ..."

53. Line 154: Change to read "This finding may have resulted from an increasing ..."

54. Line 155: "retirements" and  "showed"

55. Line 156 "childcare"

56. Line 157: "This reality may be more pronounced in ... where the parental nurturing role ... than their male counterparts."

57. Line 160-161: Take out the dependent clause and write: "The results presented in Table 3 show that personal characteristics..."

58. Line 163. Remove "the" to read "during calm perionds..."

59. Line 169: Remove "compare" and write "examine..."

60.  Line 171: Write as "personal characteristics separately for males..."

61. Line 191: Remove "significantly"

62. Line 195: "...unemployment was reduced..."

63. Line 201: "a series of remedial measures was introduced..."

64. Line 204: "the paper shows...

65. Line 206: "COVID-19 contributed an additional plight..."

66. Line 207-208: Might read as follows: "Many females, especially those with children, were forced to exit the labour market as many childcare facilities..."

67. Line 211 "behaviours."

68. Lines 215-221, 223: "affected ...  compared, found that, for both.... had a negative effect.... household did not ..." "did" (rather than does) and "paper showed that the limitation..."

69. Line 227, 231. "The findings were"... "The paper alluded..."

70. Line 233. I recommend changing "gender-biased" to "gender-based" and inserting either "determining" or "establishing" in front of "future policies..."

Author Response

Thank you for your constructive comments. Find the attached file explaining our responses to the comments. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

details in attachment

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for the constructive comments. Please find attached our responses to the comments. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

see the attached file,

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors, thank you for the response. In present form the scientific character of this paper is much better. But three issues should be consider again:

1. Part 2. Unemployment trend in South Africa

Figure 1: unemployment trend by gender (2008-2021)

Please ensure again, what do you want to show us? What do you mean about the unemployment trend?:

- the unemployment phenomena  (the number of unemployment, nominally in thousand of people) or - the scale of this phenomena (using selected indicators like unempolyment rate)?

Please organize the title of this part  again, title of the figure 1 and the text below to make this all think unequivocal.

Please add in the tittle of the figure 1. (or % or in thousand).

2. Part 2. - some advice

Maybe it will be great asset to add extra information about spatial differentiation on the labour market in RPA - for readers it is interesting if this phenomena is similar to others countries. Add comments to make this part more detailed and show the specific of the labour market in this country f.e. in inter and intra regional approach/ or rural - urban  approach. It is very interesting. 

As you think, are the personal features of unemployment, you tested in the empirical part of this article, important in being at risk of unemployment in different regions?

3. Conclusions - make the conclusions more rich and detailed, give recommendation for your results, and implication. The conclusions in the presented form are to general. Explain and highlight the contribution of this empirical research to sciences and practice. Please support the conclusions by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature?

 

Author Response

see the attached file. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf