The International Labour Organization (ILO) Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189), aims to promote decent work for all and to ensure fundamental protections and rights to domestic

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives and perceptions in many important ways: the value we put on face-to-face interactions, the importance of personal space, communication with loved ones, and much more. Some of these perceptions and social changes may actually outlive the pandemic.

Women are generally under-represented in political offices worldwide, and their under-representation becomes larger in more senior positions. In the first brief, the author reviews some recent academic literature in economics and political science on the likely causes of women’s under-representation. Broadly speaking, the literature has divided such causes into “supply-side” and “demand-side” factors.

The COVID-19 pandemic and consequent stringent lockdown measures have had a drastic toll on the Georgian economy. The economic downturn has significantly affected the resilience of local Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), whose sales decreased by almost 13% (YoY) in the first two quarters of 2020. These negative impacts of the economic contraction have been particularly severe for Women-led Small and Medium Enterprises (WSMEs).

When the Georgian unemployment statistics for Quarter 2 (April, May, June) of 2020 came out, no one was surprised to see that the national unemployment rate, which had been falling steadily over the previous quarters, and even years, suddenly increased by 0.9 percentage points relative to the same quarter of 2019 (more precisely from 11.4% in Q2 2019 to 12.3% in Q2 2020). Perhaps we were more surprised by the fact that the unemployment rate did not go up more drastically in the midst of a strict lockdown, various travel restrictions, and quarantine measures.