As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect lives around the world, it is becoming clear that the pandemic and its economic fallout are having a regressive effect on gender equality. Sociologist Jutta Allmendinger recently claimed the pandemic will set Germany back 30 years in terms of the equality achieved between men and women. Mothers in particular are disadvantaged by existing containment strategies. But, was the situation really much better to start with or is the pandemic only exacerbating inequities that long predated the virus, as economist Richard V. Reeves recently suggested?

This panel discussion will feature Jutta Allmendinger (President of WZB Berlin Social Science Center) and Richard V. Reeves (Senior Fellow and Director of the Future of the Middle Class Initiative, The Brookings Institution). The discussion will be moderated by Birte Meier (Journalist, ZDF) whose residency at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles to work on "Equal Pay in California and what Germany can learn from it" was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.