In my opinion, when people ask what the victory is for you for Ukraine, I usually agree with borders, coming back to the borders of the nineteen ninety one. However, for me personally, victory is when Ukrainian families unite in Ukraine, not abroad.
Hello Stephanomics, here the podcast that brings you the global economy. Ukraine needs its women to come home and soon. Almost a year and a half after President Putin's invasion, the human cost for Russia's neighbor has been devastating. The Ukraine's economy has also shrunk by at least a third, in part because a large chunk of its female workforce is
no longer there. Policymakers in Kiev are acutely aware that the longer those displaced families stay away, the more they will put down roots in their host countries, and the less likely it is that these vital workers will come home. In a minute, I'll talk to migration expert Marta Foresti about the challenge facing Ukraine and the practical steps it could take to encourage its women to return. But first, here's our Ukraine Bureau chief in Kiev, Dasha Krasnoutska.
Oh here it is.
They are. That's an air raid, an air raid siren, several of them going off here in the center of the Ukrainian capital.
When the Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine a year and a half ago, it's easy enough to forget the shock and cares that followed.
Good morning from the Ukrainian capital Kiev.
Gunfire and explosions have been heard here and in the second city of Kharkiv.
Within days they had reached to the outskirts of Kiev. There were gunfights in the city center. Millions of civilians, mostly women with children, fled to safety abroad in a spectacle that was at the same time horrific and inspiring. Countries from Poland to Canada flunk opened their doors to take them in.
Since Russian tanks rolled across Ukrainian borders, triggering a war that killed thousands of civilians, forced millions to flee, it was.
Mostly women trying desperately to get their kids onto trains because men aged eighteen to sixty were banned from leaving the country.
While many have returned already, there are.
Still six point three million Ukrainian refugees abroad with no end to the war in sight. And that's a growing concern for Kiv because what if Ukraine's women don't come back.
The majority of Ukrainian of people who left Ukraine, I would not rather call them refugees. I would call the people who temporarily left the country are women, and this are women with higher educational degrees. Secrety percent of women are with high educational degrees and although they usually have children, that's why they left.
That's the Tiana Burshna, Ukraine's Deputy Minister for the Economy. Burshna is in charge of labor policies and is varied that the longer the women stay away, getting jobs, learning the local language, seeing their kids make new friends in.
New schools, the less likely it is they'll return.
In my opinion, when people ask what the victory is for you for Ukraine, I usually agree with borders, coming back to the borders of the nineteen ninety one. However, for me personally, victory is when Ukrainian families unite in Ukraine, not abroad.
That matters for a lot of different reasons, but a big one is the The government has ambitious plans for Ukraine's recovery after the war. It aims to double the size of the country's badly damaged the economy by twenty thirty two. That's going to take huge quantities of investment. The World Bank says four hundred and eleven billion US dollars over a decade and is going to take a
lot of people. The government says it needs to find four point five million more workers in order to succeed, and getting all working age women back from abroad would cover about half that deficit. Alexeisakov at Bloomberg Economics ran some calculations to estimate what the cost would be to the economy if none of the working age women among the refugees should return. The answer twenty billion US dollars a year, of ten percent of the economy. Even before
the war's rank it by almost a third. So will they come back?
All decisions about the buying made the women's.
So this is all the Horokhovsky, co founder of Monobank, a mobile only bank service provider. If you didn't catch him, he said, all decisions about buying are made by women.
In his own opinion, of course.
Yeah, without women's and kids, economy will not worse. I'm sure his.
Business has still grown since the start of the war. In part because it's easy for people to set up an account and bank on his app when they're on the move. But he has no illusions about that continuing. If the overall economy cannot grow too, it would.
Be a super hard project because because of war can continuous quite a long time. Now continuous a long time more than one year. Yeah, people assimilate in a new places, the kids start going who their mothers, start working and find some job. So Ukraine has to motivate Ukrainians to return.
In many ways, Ukraine will have to start from scratch. Antoine cities have been decimated in some basic infrastructure that had already been neglected for the thirty years since the Soviet collapse was damaged further, even without the constant threat from Russian missiles, this would be a very difficult task. Here is mccola Capacina, who owns roadsted Terminal concord ALC, a shipping services company in Miclile.
It's a port city in the.
South that was on the front lines for much of the war, getting sheld on a near daily basis.
The other side of the medal is that there's no jobs still for those Michelife citizens who want to come back, the logistics is still in the worse condition. The porter is blocked and all these facilities are blocked, completely blocked. So to make Mike alive absolutely attractive, the critical point is to restart the port activity.
And for women, especially those with children, there are even simpler questions.
Well, I would need to be sure that the situation in Ukraine is safe for my son on the first place.
That is a very little coal.
A forty two year old businesswoman who used to run a company in Kiev that help multinationals like Paramount Pictures to sell licenses in Ukraine. Now she has a job marketing consumer products in Frankfurt and her twelve year old.
Son goes to school there.
Two Valeria is well educated and speaks multiple languages, as does her son, which has made their transition a bit easier, but others are far more limited.
There are a lot of people who flitted without knowledge of any language except the Ukrainian and Russian, and for them it's way way more complicated to get themselves to integrate in the society and so on. So most of those people are planning to get back to Ukraine just because they don't find themselves here.
That won't be enough to attract those four point five million workers. Ukraine is developing several programs, such as bloans for soldier spouses to start their own businesses. It's also trying to reform labelers to close the genter pay gap. In Nikolai and other cities, schools and bus stops are getting bomb shelters.
Because we know that even if the victory comes this Russia will be at our borderline, at our borders forever. That's why we need to be prepared to any other attacks, so the efforts and the safety measures will be better than before the full scale innovasion in Kiev.
I'm Dorina Krasnosko for Bloomberg.
News, so let me catch up briefly with Alex Iakov, who's a Russia and Central Eastern Europe economist currently based in Dubai, who I had asked to take a look at this question of the missing women refugees who've left Ukraine and what kind of hole that represents in Ukraine's future, and he very kindly came up with some numbers, a couple of which were included in that piece, but I wanted to get into it a little bit more. Alex,
Thank you very much for joining us. It's a very striking estimate that you have that if if none of the around three million working age women who have ar reestimated to have left Ukraine since Russia's invasion, if none of them ever return, it would cost the economy twenty billion dollars a year, or about ten percent of the pre war GDP. I know that's a worse case, But how did you get to that number.
We've basically had done our analysis into steps. First, we've looked at the employment rates among the prime age females in Ukraine and tried to understand which kind of proportion of these nearly three million females will be employed working. And then we've looked at the pre war data on the distribution of essentially a added venue produced by various industries in which those females have been employed before Russia's invasion.
So what we do is we essentially account for both the volume of labor Ukraine lost and the productivity like the distribution between industries of that labor. And in additionally, as a third step in this cost we include the labor lost due to the families reunited abroad. Ukraine's Deputy Economy Minister Titiana brish Nai. She said, like the victory of Ukraine would be when Ukrainian families could be reunited
within country, not outside the country. So even economic terms, families uniting outside the country will be costly for the country and will contribute to this loss of around twenty billion dollars of added value each year.
And we see that impact. I guess already in what's happened to Ukraine's economy in the last year, because the sectors were you were looking at this that the sectors where women were most likely to be employed are also some of the sectors that have been most hard hit.
Is that right? Yes? Correct?
So Ukrainian economy has lost a third of its GDP last year to be precise, twenty nine percent, and we see that the largest damage has been incurred by the sectors that have like the largest gender imbalance. So if you look at hospitality and trade, this has the largest
share of female employment and has been hardest hit. And or the other hand of the spectrum, the mobilization and other kind of things that are related to war has hit the predominantly male employment industries such as construction and.
Transfer, and I guess it's striking. I mean, was the labor force participation in Ukraine higher than other countries. Of the women's labor force participation.
That's true, So this is I think a deeper point which has like probably some upside to it. The labor participation rate in Ukraine for women is not that high. It's actually lower than for most of the developed countries. But on the other hand, the share of women in the labor force in employment is forty eight percent, and it's actually pretty high. So it's higher than in Germany, in the United States, in most of the European countries.
And this is mostly due to demography. So this is not like a high participation rate, but it's actually related to the fact that women live longer, participate in the workforce longer than man, and there are more of them. So like this is the question mostly of demography, not
of high participation rates. The upside here is that and we see that actually in a lot of post war reverse mitigration staties, is that when refugees former refugees go back to the company, they actually bring a lot of like social values and approaches to work, et cetera, et cetera from their host countries. And we could expect that labor participation for women post war will be higher.
That's interesting. So it's not that they're more likely to participate, it's just that there are more women. But potentially we might see they might even be more valuable if we can get them back, if Ukraine can get them back, they might be even more valuable to the economy than they were before. And I guess final question, now it's used most of your time looking at the Russian economy. We've mentioned that the Ukraine economy has shrunk by a
third since Russia's invasion. What's happened to the Russian economy?
Russia lost a little bit more than two percent last year and it's on track to grow around one percent. Like it's mostly government spending. It's mostly given by a large expansion of public spending related to war and related to various subsidies. So it's probably not that sustainable and the growth race in the future will be much lower than they were in the past. But Russian economy seems to be like faring better than consensus expected.
As you say, potentially not sustainable, but a pretty stark contrast with what's happened in Ukraine. Alex Kisikov, Thank you so much.
Yeah, thanks Evanie.
So we can round out this special program on the missing women and children of Ukraine now by talking to Martha Foresti, a senior fellow from the UK Development think tank ODI who was previously it's Europe director and senior migration expert Marta. We've identified in this program a very large hole in Ukraine's reconstruction plans, which Ukrainians are well aware of, but I'm not sure it's a big part of conversations outside the country. How important are those absent women to Ukraine's future?
Thank you, Stephanie. And this is fascinating.
Because, of course is a very particular feature of the terrible conflict in Ukraine and Russian's invasion that has men that so many women have fled, and now Ukraine is in this position and he needs, you know, to really find ways to attract them back. But we forget that this is a challenge that many countries have in trying to get people who leave who are often the most talented, the most you know, those with resources, those with degrees, and those with ambitions to come back to either a
construct or contribute to economies. And so it's useful to think about Ukraine given this specific aspect of the story that relates specifically to women. Also to challenge the perception that often is just men who flee, and so that there is no value to those who flee a country
in search of protection and better future. So there are lots of lessons here and lessons in other countries, including you know, in other you know, European neighbors are all struggling actually to attract back to their economies, both their own, you know, people who have left, but also to attract new migrants from neighboring countries to contribute to the future.
And it's interesting that there is this debate in Ukraine already about whether you know, for the reconstruction it will be important to attract the women back, but also reach out to try to attract other young migrants from neighboring countries.
And I mean it is somewhat of a special case that, you know, the vast bulk of the people who've left the country have been women, and that's obviously there's a very practical reason for that. But men are not allowed to leave given the security situation and the need to be to be defending the country. But it's just as as a byke as specialist. What special challenges does that represent when you're thinking about a predominantly female migrant population.
That's it's dispersed as we've heard, you know, we hear in the program about they're in Brazil, they're in Germany, they're in Poland, they're in the UK. They are now everywhere.
So the first thing to say, which is an important reminder, is that if you look at global migration figures, people tend to forget that women migrate as much as men globally. Of course, there are very specific differences. We just mentioned Ukraine with a very particular story. There is obviously more men and younger men to you know, leave Africa towards towards Europe. But generally speaking is important to recognize that these days women migrate as much as men when it
comes to Ukraine. Of course, women's are key players in modern's economies and so many countries around Europe. Think about how many Southern European countries really struggle precisely because they have low participation of women in labor markets. So it's not surprising that attracting women back in such a priority and in terms of the challenges that this particular experience.
Of course, you know, a lot of these women fled with children, and so the countries hosting in the first place had to step up efforts with things like places in schools and housing. But it's interesting to see also in your article how many women have actually found opportunities to contribute to local economies. Do we know that people who leave, whether they live by choice or they are
forced to do so because of conflict. We know that people who leave tend to be the most resourceful, those who have talent, energy, often financial resources to do so, so it's not surprising that they find opportunities where they go. But of course, with time, these women are now making life and contributing to societies and economies elsewhere, and so
like other countries. In my own country where I'm now in Italy, you know, interestingly enough, has a similar challenge that you know, there are too many young, talented people leaving the country and the country needs to attract them back to contribute to the future. And this goes hand in hand with demographic trends which are common all over Europe.
If we think of the sort of broader experience of displaced populations and the challenge that potentially war torn countries face in trying to attract these people back, people that, as you've identified, are often the most economically important and skilled members of a country. In the case of the Bosnian War, there's still a large chunk of the people who left have not returned. But elsewhere in the world are there lessons for Ukraine.
So there are lots of lessons to learn.
And it's fascinating how bad we are at learning lessons when it comes to people to move, because tragically it interacts with, you know, such toxic and heightened sort of political debate. It's sometimes it's really hard to see the wood for the tree in terms of what's going on.
I mean, I think it's both things.
Are true that, you know, some people are reluctant to go back, partly because they do find a life in host countries and communities, But it is equally true that so many people are the longing to come back to where they're from, and particularly people who were forced to flee because of conflict. Really, you know, there is a real determination and willingness to go back and find other ways to contribute to reconstruction to wherever people are are from.
I have first stand experience of Si Leone, which is a country that was until recently affected by a terrible violent conflict. And I mean I've been working closely with the mayor of Freetown, the capital of Serlio and who are selfs spent you know, many of the war years in the UK were she became an accomplished accountant and got a degree from k universities and now you know, is back as a mayor of the capital city and determined to.
Make a contribution.
And I've been working with artists and creatives, designers based in Freetown, and I was really struck how many of them were so called the retornees, so people who chose to go back after the conflict. We all know how much remittances matter for local economic development, and of course people bring back those resources when they return. But importantly an after overlooked is the know how is the knowledge?
Is the network?
Is the you know, the inspiration that people find away from home and they bring it back. And so I was struck by how many of the local creatives that are you know, really determined to support the reconstruction of Seri Leone through the creative sectors. The creative economy that so much can do to also portray a different story about the value and the beauty of what gets made in Sera Leone, and to attract the people to the
beautiful country that Sera Leone is. How many of them are returnees, how many of them are women, and how many of them are making the most of the connections they built in the US, in the UK and elsewhere to in you know, to make that happen. It doesn't come without challenges. You know, there are also tensions between returnees and those who do not have a chance to leave again. Once again, people who leave tend to be the better off, and so it's not you know, inclusion
doesn't come automatically. But I was really inspired by the potential and the determination and the economic contribution and.
The know how.
I wonder whether there are specific policies that in Ukraine's thinking about how they approach online schooling, for example, which many of the displays Ukrainian children are doing, but they want to not have it, perhaps not offer it anymore from September as a way of encouraging people to return. But of course it could have the opposite effect of loosening the ties that had to continue to exist between
the children and their home country. Just from your experience, are there any particular policies that would be more supportive of women thinking of coming back.
Well, let me let me let me mention two of them. One you would expect, which is what again, a number of European countries are all experimenting with, which of course are fiscal policies and so making it easier and create fiscal incentives, particularly for people who are likely to bring back, also some you know, some financial resources to facilitate that
investment and to make it attractive taxation wise. And so that's something that happens in a number of European countries that can be sort of studied and applied and adapted to.
Different to other countries.
The other one, which might sound a little bit a counterintuitive, but it's something I'm increasingly interested in, is that it's really important to make sure that you know to to make sure that those who come back can also leave again. I've been looking, for example, recently at visa policies. If you know, if somebody has a life and has connections in another country, and if returning means that you're never going to be allowed to leave again, you're really going
to think twice before you do so. So to really create mechanisms and visas that can facilitate the movement of people between you know, the countries of origin, but also the countries where they're likely to have built at least part of their life will be really really important. Again, going back to my example of Sera Leone, it is extraordinarily difficult through asierli national to obtain say a business
or visitors visas to Europe. We've done some analysis on that and it's quite shocking, and it's the same in a number of African countries.
Now.
It may well be that some of those returnees would have acquired passports in the process and they may come back with you know, as we do, a nationality.
But that's not true for everyone. Not every country allows.
You to do so, and so thinking of visa regimes that really facilitate your ongoing movement may be may well be one incentive to facilitate returns as well as obviously programs to ensure that can be successful or integration, particularly when there are you know, say, drivers of the conflict that mean that people the return might find themselves in difficult circumstances, both financially but also in relation for example, to ethnic tensions and other and other you know, and
other challenges. But these are some of the practical things that could be thought of, which again in migration debates are very very rarely consider that, given that all efforts are still in trying to keep people away and not to encourage people to go back.
And that's a fascinating thought. I think I should definitely get I hope it's already on someone's list in in Brussels or in the capitals, because as you say, it's counterintuitive. Continuing from that, we clearly have made something of an exception in our kind of political conversation in Europe. For Ukraine, the Ukrainian migrants are being considered just very differently to
migrants from other countries. Do you get a sense, Martha, that this conflict and these migrants have started to humanize the face of migrant change the attitude to refugees more generally. Are you hopeful on that? Not?
Really? Sadly not.
I wish I could say I wish I could say I was, But it is precisely because this exceptionalism of this crisis, but many other crisis you know, this tendency to just deal with each of them as one ops.
It's something where somebody makes a superhuman effort rather than really focus on the reality of people's movements across borders, you know, looking for opportunities and jobs, to really try to find the narrative around the movement of people that challenges some of the you know, the scare mongerity and the fears. And unfortunately, a crisis of any kind does not resolve that. And in fact, my slight worry is that we go from crisis to crisis, and at every
crisis we make it worse. The next one coming up is the climate crisis, where we're all going to be terrified of people being displaced a result of climate emergency. And again, that doesn't make it easier to think of policies and political narratives that take away the anxieties and the fears and work with the practicalities of allowing people to work.
Like that's a very concrete example.
Has the Ukraine crisis changed the dial and made any programs on liberalizing policies to make it so that in different European countries those who are seeking asylum can work. The answer is no, largely we have created pockets of you know, humanitarian response. We've seen you know, people opening their houses to refugees, which is great, but that's not
what's needed. What is needed is a form of pragmatic, rational and realistic, you know, suite of policies not just about migration and migration control, but critically labor market skills, shortages, demographic trends, where people come into a country, a country being attractive to other people is actually a good thing politically, and we're very far away from having made a case for it.
Martapest, thank you so much.
Thank you, Stephanie.
Well, that's it for this entire series of Stephanomics. But you can and the rest of your summer with Bloomberg's economic insights and news on the Bloomberg Terminal website or app. This episode was produced by Mangus, Henrisson, Yang Yang and Summer Sadi. The reporters on the Ukraine story were Mark Champion, Andrew Langley, and Alexandra Kudritsky. It was narrated by a Ukraine Bureau chief in Kiev, Dasha krasno Lutska. Special thanks
to alex Isikov and Marta Forresty. Molly Smith is the executive producer of Stephanomics and the head of Bloomberg Podcasts is Sage Bowmen.