By Olha Chepil | 2024-06-18

KYIV -- After more than two years of the full-scale war Russia unleashed, a labor shortage has hit Ukraine.

Analysts chalk it up largely to the forced migration of millions of Ukrainians abroad, internal displacement and the draft.

The draft took hundreds of thousands of workers -- the vast majority of them men -- off the market.

A matter of survival

"This is now a matter of survival for the labor market. The risks of depopulation in Ukraine are high these days. In areas near the front, people are leaving and not coming back. The elderly have left; the men have been mobilized, so who's still here? The women," Tetiana Pashkina, a human resources specialist and career consultant, told Kontur.

The draft in Ukraine is still under way, and large companies and factories are hurting from the shortage of men, Pashkina said.

Even though Ukraine outlawed the exclusion of women from any profession in 2017, stereotyping by gender still exists.

That stereotyping is now colliding with the need to fill jobs that men once held.

"Women now need to go work in the mines, drive tractors, work as security guards and work in warehouses and on the docks. This is typically how things are in wartime," Pashkina said.

At the ArcelorMittal metallurgical plant in Kryvyi Rih, hometown of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, managers call hiring more women a matter of survival, the Financial Times reported on May 19.

Of the 18,000 workers at the plant when the full-scale invasion occurred, about 3,500 men have been drafted. That number will probably rise this year.

Executives are looking for women to step into positions previously held by men: locomotive engineers, electricians and mechanics.

"Large businesses, such as the international steel and mining company Metinvest; DTEK, the largest private investor in Ukraine's energy sector; the iron ore producer Ferrexpo and [businesses in] heavy machine building and metallurgy -- all of them have started hiring women because they have no choice," Pashkina said.

However, not everyone can hire women.

Kateryna Chigir of Kyiv and her father run a 23-year-old small business that finishes decorative stones.

The company receives slabs that weigh between 100 and 150kg for carving and polishing. Women have never applied to work there because of the physical demands.

"We're short staffed, but we're managing by transferring [men] from one machine to another," Chigir told Kontur.

Many of her competitors have closed their doors because they could not survive under these conditions, she said.

"This year could be our last. If the Ukrainian leadership doesn't introduce an economic exemption from military service, that will be the end of the road for me and my business," Chigir said.

Valuing female labor

As women's involvement in the economy becomes a need and not an option, they are breaking down doors that were long closed to them.

"Employers are willing to offer [women] the chance to go through workplace training and take a job," Natalia Vozniak, director of the recruiting department of the Volyn provincial employment bureau's Lutsk office, told Kontur.

"Take ... painting car bodies, a job men have always done. Now there could be a company that agrees to train women for these painting jobs," she said.

It is no longer rare for women to do manual labor, she said. They are becoming welders and crane operators.

In 2023, more than 10,000 residents of Volyn province found work through the provincial employment bureau, including more than 6,500 women, she said.

"Women don't work just for money or career advancement. Many of them say that while their husbands are on the front, they also want to help Ukraine, so they're willing to put themselves on the line," Vozniak said.

The trend of hiring women could help overcome the undervaluing of female labor in Ukraine, say analysts.

"Drawing women to male-dominated professions might even shrink the disgraceful wage gap, which was 18.6% last year. So there's an opportunity to create positive changes," Pashkina said.

In another effort to help businesses, the Ukrainian cabinet is drawing up a list of professions exempt from the draft. If the resolution becomes law, professions rather than specific individuals will be exempt.

Mainly, jobs in essential industries will fall under that rubric, say analysts.