Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to investigate comparatively whether positive discrimination has been and if it remains a suitable solution to ensure respect for the rights of every human being, emphasizing the situation of women. It describes the causes and the origin of affirmative action in the United States and how it extended in Europe too. This was in close connection with the movements of feminists and black people. It was a solution to integrate and treat minorities and historically disadvantaged groups of people as equals. This paper analyses the effects and necessity of this policy to ensure the protection of everyone’s rights. The final section addresses the opinion of the author on the issue of continuous hate for women in the present times. The references used for this study are sociological, historical, and political papers, articles, and books.
Introduction
The end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century was a period marked by the efforts of many personalities from the United States of America, Canada and countries from Europe to promote and ensure equal rights for women and men.[1] Elizabeth Cady Stanton,[2] the voice behind the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention (the first convention in the United States whose purpose was to publicly emphasize the importance of securing women’s right to vote),[3] Sojourner Truth (women’s rights activist, well-known for being the first black women to set free her son from slavery in a case court against a white man and for her Ain’t I a Women? speech during Civil War)[4], Simone de Beauvoir (well-known French writer and political activist, considered also a philosopher for the influence of her essays on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory)[5], Malala Yousafzai (the Pakistani activist for human rights and female education and the world’s youngest Nobel Prize laureate)[6] are only several names of those who dedicated their work to raise awareness about the unfair social situation of women all over the world. That period led to fundamental changes in the legal, political and economical status of women all over the world.
In the first wave of movements (around 1840s), the right to vote, right to property and marital freedoms were highlighted and earned by women.[7] The second wave entailed the public response on the subject matter, but also securing further rights related to reproduction and sexual liberties,[8] along with changes based on gender issues (marital choice, legislative divorce changes etc.). The third wave, in the 1990s, represented an extension of reactions among women from all social categories and promoted diversified and multiple experiences; they tried to dismantle the misconception that women should be seen as a monolith. At that moment women gained something more symbolic and important than rights and social status, they gained the power to choose and they were no longer seen, in theory at least, as the property of men. In other words, one could argue that they earned their natural right to live their own life as they wished to. However, the fourth wave of feminist movements featured more criticism than ever[9] due to the concepts of affirmative action and anti-discrimination becoming notorious. Many people considered this an unjustified privilege for women and a clear disadvantage for men.[10]
The first part of the work will discuss affirmative action and its origin and will analyze its history in the labour domain and how it changed and extended over the years. The second part will focus on the present situation of working women in the United States and some states of Europe, including Romania. In the last part, the paper will present the general conclusions on affirmative action’s evolution over the last decades.
1. Affirmative Action: history and context
The concept of affirmative action appeared around 1935 after the National Labor Relations Act was pushed by New York’s Democratic Senator Robert Wagner through Congress. This act allowed the workers to unionize and collectively bargain with their employers. If the workers were discriminated against in any way at their workplace, the employers must have taken ‘affirmative action’ to make the environment nondiscriminatory again.[11] Also it must be mentioned that Harold Ickes, an American administrator and politician who served as United States Secretary of the Interior during the entire presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt,[12] issued an order to prohibit discrimination in Public Works Administration projects in 1933. However, the order was disregarded by most contractors, thus becoming ineffectual. An important step in the affirmative action policy were several New Deal Programmes enacted in the context of the Great Depression in the United States, such as the minimum wage and social security, that granted benefits for every person, regardless of race, gender or sex.[13]
The meaning of affirmative action changed over the years and it could be defined in many ways, such as ‘policy to overcome the effects of past types of discrimination’[14], ‘policy which explicitly favours historically disadvantaged groups’[15], ‘positive discrimination’[16], but its main role remained the same: to ensure equal treatment for people in every domain.[17] Anti-discrimination and affirmative action struggle with the perpetuated system of expectations and the patterns of inequality. By performing old work in new ways and by breaking into jobs formerly closed to them, the women involved in these efforts began, in effect, to reconstitute gender and class, permanently destabilizing the hegemonic distinction between women’s and men’s work.[18] It should be acknowledged that there are some commonalities between these movements and the ones started by people of colour. Both these social categories faced the ignorance of authorities and the discrimination of systems all around the world,[19] especially in the United States as it was a young country occupied by many different ethnicities which created a non-homogeneous cultural background.[20]
After the Great Depression female employment’s was negatively affected because many men thought that working women would take their jobs and during the economic boom which followed, they ignored them in the labour area. Women needed to take the jobs that men did not want to have (meaning that managerial and executive positions were for men and lower-paying jobs were for women) and, except for nursing and teaching, men dominated the professions. This discrimination was then considered fair even by most women and employment traditions were hard to break.[21]
Besides tradition, there were also political implications on women’s views on the fairness of their situation, more specific, the Cold War[22]– a period of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, which is thought to have begun following World War II until the Dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.[23] The Soviet woman was seen working alongside men in factories and communes to participate in the process of creating and supporting the state and the Americans thought that the traditional American housewife is another concept that separates them from the Communist world.[24]
After the Great Depression and the economic prosperity which followed, World War II changed negatively women’s situation at work even more because nobody wanted to hire them so the reaction was the „Rosie the Riveter” campaigns to get females on the jobs.[25] The response to this movement was positive, considering that women were still seen as the property of men. Two months after Pearl Harbor, it was reported that 68% of the population of the United States and 73% of women from there agreed with training women between 21 and 35 years for war jobs.[26] Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president of the United States during World War II, supported the idea of equal wages for women and men during wartime for the same quality and quantity of performed work.[27] The army forces of the United States then were defined by 2 important drawbacks: the segregation of forces and the selection of them based on local prejudice of race and sex.[28]
However, during Harry S. Truman’s presidency and after the end of World War II, the president requested the desegregation of army forces and supported the same ideas of social unity among people of any race, gender or sex as his predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt. Both of them demonstrated that the federal government could make more opportunities accessible for citizens.[29]
Another President of the United States who remarked himself with his support of black people’s and women’s rights was John F. Kennedy. He was the President of the United States between 1961 and 1963 and contributed to the cause by naming prominent women to his President’s Commission on the Status of Women (including Eleanor Roosevelt), a measure which, arguably, represents a form of affirmative action. After a few years, this led to The Equal Pay Act passed by Congress and John F. Kennedy’s signature on the bill made the federal government began supporting the idea that companies should not discriminate in wages because of gender.[30] He was part of the Democratic party and he aligned with the liberals to promote equal employment opportunity for every person in every federal state. The president’s Executive Order from March 1961 required government contractors to ensure equal treatment and equal hiring opportunities to every person, regardless of their race, creed, colour or national origin. It was the beginning of implementing affirmative action in every state.
The established President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity was responsible to identify if any person was discriminated against in the process of promoting a job, hiring a person and during work.[31] This executive order did not come up as expected, besides other aspects, due to the lack of explanation of some terms such as „discrimination” and the lack of distinction between the discriminatory hiring process and the discretionary power of an employer in the selection and hiring process.[32]
Nevertheless, the following acts of Kennedy to order the Interstate Commerce Commission to prohibit discrimination and to cautiously pressure the federal government and their contractors to hire minorities were having a real impact.[33]
This list of events from the United States history emphasizes the origin of affirmative action viewed as a response to discrimination based on gender. This concept’s evolution was also affected by important movements of females as the Women’s Liberation Movement, Black Feminism, The Feminist Sex Wars etc.
The concept in discussion began to spread through Europe also in the 1980s in relation to improving gender equality and to ensure protection of disadvantaged social categories.[34] In ‘Affirmative Action for Europe’ the economists and authors, Rick Van Der Ploeg and Heleen Mees recommended in 2005 that the affirmative action policy from the United States should be implemented in France as „positive discrimination”.[35] At present, France does have an affirmative action policy but it addresses only poverty, not ethnicity.[36] However, in the Constitution of France article 1 states „Statutes shall promote equal access by women and men to elective offices and posts as well as to the position of professional and social responsibility”, being inspired by the researched need for equal opportunity for both sexes. Similar to it, article 16 of the Romanian Constitution states that the Romanian state guarantees equal opportunities between women and men for holding public, civil and military positions and dignities.
In Europe, but not only, affirmative action for women is a controversial reform because the opponents claim that women are not disadvantaged by the national system, but by men in particular. Other critics claim that implementing affirmative action will undermine merit and encourage hiring people based on gender, race, ethnicity.[37] In this context, states from Europe have some regulations against discrimination based on sex[38] inspired by international instruments such as the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union[39], European Convention on Human Rights[40] which are based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly[41] and other documents such as Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.[42]
2. The effectiveness of affirmative action
The implementation of affirmative action was necessary for the United States due to the lack of results regarding Presidents’ pressures on employers to hire women and people of different races and ethnicity. In this situation, it was imperiously necessary to compel them to hire people from disadvantaged social categories based on their gender, ethnicity or race.[43] This was the only solution to ensure that women’s and minorities’ rights are respected in the hiring process. Not only did the United States need to increase the diversity among those selected for jobs, but all the states over the world that failed to ensure that every person had the same opportunities to education, work, government contracts etc. In most cases, the best way to implement affirmative action in companies or in the public institutions of a state was the introduction of quotas policy. In this context, employers would be obliged to hire a quota of minorities in the total number of employees.
The effectiveness of implementation of affirmative action policy is discussed in the research ‘Does Affirmative Action Reduce Gender Discrimination and Enhance Efficiency? New experimental Evidence’. Authors, Guillaume Beaurain and David Masclet,[44] investigated the impact of quota policies on gender discrimination and hiring decisions to see if it is effective and if it increases female employment. The experiment revealed that there is a significant gender gap in employee rankings in the no quota treatment and this is caused by discrimination based on the erroneous opinion that men perform better than women in tournaments. It is also revealed that there is no single difference between women’s and men’s performance, only the fact that men tend to be more competitive (due to their over-confidence). At the same time, the quota treatment is shown to reduce gender discrimination significantly and the firm’s efficiency is not affected by the introduction of it.[45]
Susan E. Martin presents how women employment evolved over the years in the police department of the United Stated in her article The effectiveness of affirmative action: The case of women in policing, due to affirmative action policy and the former and the following litigations.[46] She evoked the Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971) case where the Supreme Court held that the discriminatory employment criteria were illegal unless the employer could show that such selection standards were job-related.[47] After this case, the defendant held the burden of proof so he was the one which had to demonstrate that the selection process was non-discriminatory. After Wars Cove Packing Co. Inc. v. Atonio (1989), the Supreme Court shifted the burden of proof of alleged job discrimination to workers.[48] Until these cases, more specific before the 1970s, minorities and women faced police departments’ discriminatory entrance requirements related to race and sex in the police department.[49]
However, the affirmative action plans changed the situation in most cases by the end of 1986 and the author studied how effective these were for women and the ethnic population. She observed that the proportion of female officers grew by more than 100 percent between 1971 and 1978 and doubled again between 1978 and 1986. Also, the effects of affirmative action policy on the representation of minorities in policing were greater than those for women. She discovered that the representation of minorities in policing increased by more than 15%, from about 7% in 1971 to 13.8% in 1978 and 22.5% at the end of 1986.[50] She also noticed that women were still underrepresented in policing (both as officers and supervisors), but affirmative action made a major contribution to the change that occurred and observed a statistically significant positive difference between departments that had adopted this policy and those that did not.[51] Also, women were significantly more likely to be eligible for promotion to sergeant in departments with court-orders affirmative action than in departments with voluntary or no affirmative policy.[52]
Susan E. Martin concludes that in the police department important changes had occurred in the past two decades and those increased the heterogeneity among police personnel. This strengthened the recognition that all kinds of officers can contribute to police work and enabled them to deal effectively with the citizens they are employed to serve and protect.[53]
In the ‘Employment Dynamics of Married Women in Europe’ study, Pierre-Carl Michaud and Konstantinos Tatsiramos observed the labour behaviour of married women in six European countries for the period 1994-2001 (more exactly, Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and United Kingdom).[54] It is important to analyse the issues of female employment from this point of view because women, in most cases, are still made responsible for the education and the growth of their children. This means that they are the first to quit their job to spend time with their children.
The mentioned authors observed an increase in female employment rates over time which is highest for the Netherlands and Spain. On average, employment rates were higher in France, Germany, and the U.K. (between 65%-75%), and lower in the Netherlands, Italy (around 50%), and Spain (40%). Also, in all countries, those with higher education are more likely to be employed.[55] They suggested that the explanation for the differences in employment rates could be due to differences in the average education level and due to the segmentation of the labour market along with education level. Those with low levels had a harder time finding jobs in southern countries.[56]
However, it was discovered, as expected, that females without children have higher employment rates relative to those with one child or more, except for France where the difference is statistically insignificant.[57] The presents birth rates stratified by education level showed that births are more frequent among those more educated except for Italy. In the last case, low educated who tend to work less have higher birth rates.[58]
Dan Țop’s study ‘Forms and ways in which women combine your responsibilities for home care and productive employment in work in Romania, member state of the U.E.’, analyses the situation of female employment in Romania as a state member of the European Union.[59] He claims that the role of women is no longer limited to domestic and reproductive activities and that, in theory, women are given equal positions and autonomy as men in contemporary society and the labour area.[60] In the European Union, equality between women and men is one of the fundamental values promoted over decades.[61]Regardless of these facts, women carry the burden of reconciliation between work and family because they are the ones who take care of responsibilities towards family and children. It is said by the author that this role of women is perhaps one of the major factors that direct women to such employment opportunities. Romania is found to be in the last places in the European Union in the number of women integrated into the labour market, as well as below the European average regarding the percentage that occupies management positions.[62]
An Eurostat study from 2021 also presented Romania as being alongside with Czechia, Poland, Hungary, Italy, Greece and Malta with the biggest employment gender gap in Europe.[63] This difference could be explained by the ‘Women an Men Work and life partnership’ study of Romania National Institute of Statistics from 2019 that found that there is no gender difference in the participation to the education until graduation of university (no matter what study program is followed). Then it is explained how women are not totally integrated in the labour area because they tend to start a family after graduation and spend more time raising their children. It is also important to mention that this difference between the employment rates of women and men increases with the number of children.[64]
Dan Țop discusses the european flexicurity principle, a policy that promotes employment by creating several flexible, temporary, and part-time jobs. This is said to have resulted in an even greater number of the female labour force, as most of these jobs have been taken by women. This is one way in which women can reconcile their role as mothers and their work.[65] Other ways are distance work and telemarketing. This way of work is regulated in Romania by Law no. 81/2018 and women can, at the same time, perform better and supervise children more effectively.[66]
These options encourage women to participate more in the labour area and to have the opportunity to evolve in their field of interest while they fulfil their household responsibilities. They assume this role because in Romania the old conceptions that women should take care of their children and their family’s house are still very present among people.
On the other hand, the pay gap between women and men remains high in Europe (16.3% as it was in 2005) and in Romania the percentage is 8%. As Dan Țop found, according to the Eurostat, the smallest differences between salaries, by gender, are in Romania, Italy and Luxembourg, and the biggest differences, in Estonia, the Czech Republic and Germany.[67] In this context, the solutions to improve the balance between the professional and private lives of families must be assured by the authorities because this is the reason for the big wage gap between people with different genders and the decreased female employment rates at the European level.[68]
These studies show how affirmative action policy had positive results over the years and emphasize its effectiveness. All the mentioned authors claimed the importance of integrating women in the labour and how they are not represented enough in the public services. Women are a social category that has been disadvantaged for years and authorities are the only ones who must act to ensure that women rights are respected and their equality to men is assured in every field of interest.
3. The necessity of affirmative action
The current pandemic context negatively influenced the gender gap in employment, advancement, and domestic responsibilities. In her research, ‘Women, Gender equality and COVID-19’, Linda. L. Carli reviewed the literature on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender and analysed how exactly this affected women’s employment and work situation.[69]
The mentioned author found that the coronavirus pandemic affects women more than men because, globally, women earn less than men, so they are already more financially vulnerable to job loss. The pandemic caused a fast and unprecedent loss of work hours worldwide and it is seen by the World Bank ‘to be the deepest global recession since the Second World War II’.[70] Also, based on research in Europe, women do not only earn less than men, but they also have accumulated less wealth and this fact emphasizes how the pandemic will enlarge gender inequality.[71]
The article also presents the idea that even if men increased their time spent with children, the same increase has been greater for women. The percentage of parents who share equally the childcare and housework has also increased, but this represents a minority of parents. Eastern Europe and Central Asia reported gaps in childcare, eldercare, and housework because of the pandemic.[72] These areas, and not only them, are well-known for respecting traditional genders roles and not combating the discriminatory treatment of women.
Moreover, the article reveals that fathers have more quality time to devote to their jobs than mothers and that the pandemic diminished mothers’ productivity and performance in their field of interest.[73] Also, women are more exposed to contacting COVID-19 because they are predominant as essential and care workers; they represent most of health-care workers in the United States, at least.[74] Because of this, they are also more exposed to burnout, depression and emotional distress and statistics from the United States showed that more women than men reported feeling nervous, anxious or on edge (61% vs. 49%) and down, depressed or hopeless (48% vs. 41%) at least some of the time. The United States are not a particular case, the studies revealed the same situation for women from Philippines, Thailand, Maldives, Cambodia, Nepal, Pakistan.[75]
In the last couple of years, the voices of discriminated or abused women have become increasingly significant in the public sphere, and this has developed an even greater wave of hatred towards them. Developed countries tend to accept more easily that opportunities must be equal for both sexes, regardless of the field. In the less developed countries (such as Romania), sexism and misogyny are still present and in full development. Women are treated unequally, and their economic, professional and social evolution is mostly limited by the traditional beliefs associated with them.
My position on this situation is optimistic because women are beginning to become aware that they have a wider range of opportunities to develop individually, not in constant dependence on men. Public addressing of issues related to gender discrimination, information and education for women has and will continue to have a good impact on new generations, both for women and men. Women still face discrimination, and their rights are not respected properly. The solution which could be primarily adopted so as to redress this injustice is, indeed, the affirmative action policy. This is the first step that, as I argued, helped and will help fundamentally the integration of women in different fields and areas.
[1] Ellen Carol Dubois, Feminism and Suffrage – The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848 -1869, Cornell University Press (1999).
[2] Elisabeth Griffith, In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Oxford University Press (1984).
[3] Gerda Lerner, The Meaning of Seneca Falls: 1848-1998, Fall 1998 Dissent 35 (1998), pp. 2-3.
[4] Sojourner Truth, Iman Perry, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, Penguin Classics (1998).
[5] Nancy Bauer, Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy, & Feminism, Columbia University Press (2001).
[6] Efleda Tolentino, JO Uhl, Iftikhar Ahmad, The Nobel peace prize: Malala, a girl determined to go to school, 79(1) Social Education 18 (2015), pp. 18-21.
[7] Hagar Kotef, On Abstractness: First Wave Liberal Feminism and the Construction of the Abstract Woman, 35(3) Feminist Studies (2009) 495, pp. 495-522.
[8] Nancy A. Hewitt, A Companion To American Women’s History, Blackwell Publishing Ltd (2005), pp. 414-416.
[9] Carol Lee Bacchi, The Politics of Affirmative Action, Women, Equality and Category Politics, Sage Publications 1996.
[10] Negar Shiva, Zohreh Nosrat Kharazmi, The Fourth Wave of Feminism and the Lack of Social Realism in Cyberspace, 3 Journal of Cyberspace Studies 129 (2019), pp. 129-146.
[11] Terry H. Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 15.
[12] https://www.duhoctrungquoc.vn/wiki/en/Harold_L._Ickes [accessed at 14.09.2021].
[13] Terry H. Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp.46-47.
[14] Anthony F. Libertella, Sebastian A. Sora, Samuel M. Natale, Affirmative Action Policy and changing Views, 74 Journal of Business Ethics 65 (2007), pp. 65.
[15] Surendra Kumar Badge, Dennis Epple and Lowell Taylor, Does Affirmative Action Work? Caste, Gender, College Quality, and Academic Success in India, 106(6) American Economic Review 1495 (2016), pp. 1495-1521.
[16] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/affirmative-action-for-europe [accessed at 20.09.2021].
[17] Nancy MacLean, The Hidden History of Affirmative Action: Working Women’s Struggles in the 1970s and the Gender of Class, 25(1) Feminist Studies 43 (1999), pp. 43-78.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Anthony F. Libertella, Sebastian A. Sora, Samuel M. Natale, Affirmative Action Policy and changing Views, 74 Journal of Business Ethics 65 (2007), pp. 65.
[21] Ibid., pp. 66.
[22] Ibid., pp. 67.
[23] John Mueller, What Was the Cold War about? Evidence from its Ending, 119(4) Political Science Quarterly 609 (2004/2005), pp. 609-631.
[24] Terry H. Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 67-68.
[25] Ibid., pp. 27.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid., pp. 29-30.
[29] Ibid., pp. 47-52.
[30] Ibid., pp. 68-69.
[31] Ibid., pp. 61.
[32] Ibid., pp. 62-64.
[33] Ibid., pp. 65.
[34] John W. Dietrich, The International Spread of Affirmative Action Policies: What is True Equality? (2013), History and Social Sciences Faculty Journal Articles, paper 85.
[35] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/affirmative-action-for-europe [accessed at 20.09.2021].
[36] Anthony F. Libertella, Sebastian A. Sora, Samuel M. Natale, Affirmative Action Policy and changing Views, 74 Journal of Business Ethics 65 (2007), pp. 67.
[37] Carol Lee Bacchi, The Politics of Affirmative Action, Women, Equality and Category Politics, Sage Publications 1996.
[38] As I mentioned, France and Romania.
[39] Article 23 of CFR states equality between women and men in every domain.
[40] Article 5 of ECHR states equality between spouses.
[41] In the preamble of UDHR is stipulated equality of rights between men and women and article 16 states equality between spouses.
[42] CEDAW is an international treaty adopted by the United States General Assembly in 1979 which has been ratified by 189 states (including Romania).
[43] Terry H. Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action, Oxford University Press, 2005.
[44] Guillaume Beaurain, David Masclet, Does Affirmative Action Reduce Gender Discrimination and Enhance Efficiency? New experimental Evidence, 90 European Economic Review 350 (2016), pp. 350-362.
[45] Ibid., pp. 15-23.
[46] Susan E. Martin, The effectiveness of affirmative action: The case of women in policing, 8(4) Justice Quarterly 489 (1991), pp. 489-504.
[47] Ibid., pp. 490.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Ibid.
[50] Ibid., pp. 501-502.
[51] Ibid.
[52] Ibid., pp. 498-499.
[53] Ibid., pp. 503.
[54] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=825231# [accessed at 1.10.2021].
[55] Pierre-Carl Michaud, Konstantinos Tatsiramos, Employment Dynamics of Married Women in Europe, WR-273 Labor and Population 1 (2005), pp. 4.
[56] Ibid.
[57] Ibid., pp. 5.
[58] Ibid., pp. 6.
[59] Dan Țop, Forms and ways which women combine your responsibilities for home care and productive employment in work in Romania, member state of the U.E., 1:7-14 Revue Européenne du Droit Social 7 (2020), pp. 7-14.
[60] Ibid., pp. 8.
[61] Ibid.
[62] Ibid.
[63] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Gender_statistics#Education [accessed at 01.11.2021].
[64]Women and Men Work and life partnership, https://insse.ro/cms/sites/default/files/field/publicatii/women_and_men_working_and_living_partnership_2019.pdf [accessed at 01.11.2021].
[65] Dan Țop, Forms and ways which women combine your responsibilities for home care and productive employment in work in Romania, member state of the U.E., 1:7-14 Revue Européenne du Droit Social 7 (2020), pp. 9.
[66] Ibid.
[67] Ibid., pp. 12.
[68] Ibid., pp. 12-13.
[69] https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/GM-07-2020-0236/full/html [accessed at 9.10.2021].
[70] Linda L. Carli, Women, Gender equality and COVID-19, 35(7/8) Gender in Management: An International Journal 647 (2020), pp. 647-648.
[71] Ibid., pp. 648.
[72] Ibid.
[73] Ibid.
[74] Ibid., pp. 650.
[75] Ibid., pp. 650-651.