In the last few quarters of the period under study, there was a turnaround in this trend, however, and the recession was coupled with increasing feminization, since male unemployment was on the rise. In other words, as has been observed in all the countries analysed in this study, feminization has occurred as a consequence of an economic slowdown. The increase in the number of hours per week is associated with an 8% drop in GDP. On the one hand, the presence of more women (as represented by their participation rate) relative to men has a positive effect on growth, but, on the other, an increase in labour intensity (more hours spent working in the labour market), which can be assumed to reduce the hours devoted to domestic labour, is not.