You only have to put ‘impact of COVID-19 on women’ into google for it to come up with endless articles and research and surveys showing how the pandemic has unfairly impacted women. According to Laura Turquet of UN Women, globally only 8% of all the social protection and labour market measures taken by governments support unpaid care work. This strongly affects women because even before the pandemic, globally, women did three times as much unpaid care work as men. Surveys conducted since the outbreak have found that whilst men are doing a bit more of this work, the lion’s share still rests on women’s shoulders- as unpaid caregivers in families and communities, picking up the slack where schools, childcare and other services are shut down or scaled back.
Women are more likely than men to be forced to cut back on working hours due to rising demands at home, whether it’s supervising children’s remote learning, cleaning or preparing family meals.
Women’s role as shock absorbers during crises such as COVID-19 sustains families and communities, but it often has lasting negative implications for their economic security and autonomy.
We know from previous crises, for example, that women’s employment recovers much more slowly than men’s when economies pick up again. Without decided action, there is a real danger that the pandemic will erase the important but fragile progress that women have made over the past decades.
In the UK research and surveys are revealing the full extent of this problem. The survey of 50,000 women by trade union umbrella body the TUC UK has revealed the crisis facing working mothers and they have described it as a “cry for help” and say responses highlight rapid reversal in gender equality that could take decades to repair.
TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said the government’s lack of support for working parents was causing huge financial hardship and stress – and hitting low-paid mums and single parents hardest. “Just like in the first lockdown, mums are shouldering the majority of childcare,” she said. “Tens of thousands of mums have told us they are despairing. It’s neither possible nor sustainable for them to work as normal, while looking after their children and supervising schoolwork.”
Since April 2020 the job retention scheme has allowed bosses to furlough parents who can’t work due to a lack of childcare, but the survey found that 78% of working mothers had not been offered furlough. The TUC survey found 90% of working mothers had seen their anxiety and stress levels increase during the latest lockdown, while almost half (48%) were worried about being treated negatively by their employers because of their childcare responsibilities. The research also suggests a widespread lack of awareness among workers that they can ask to be furloughed for childcare reasons – two in five mothers were unaware the scheme was available to parents affected by school or nursery closures. (see here for more results https://www.theguardian.com/…/furlough-refused-to-71-of…)
Meanwhile research from King’s College London shows that, since the lockdown began, 57% of women say they are feeling more anxious and depressed, compared to only 40% of men. More women than men also report that they are getting less sleep, and eating less healthily, than usual.
During the lockdown, mothers in the UK are typically providing at least 50% more childcare as well as spending around 10% to 30% more time than fathers home schooling their children, figures analysed by the Observer show. It doesn’t matter whether a woman is working from home, working outside the home or not working at all: the research reveals she is typically spending at least an extra hour-and-a-half on childcare and home schooling every day, compared to the average man in the same circumstances. The research, carried out by economists from the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Zurich between 9 and 14 April, indicates that a woman who is at home – whether or not she is formally working – is affected by this gender divide. Both employed and unemployed mothers are typically spending around six hours providing childcare and home schooling every working day. By contrast, the average father at home is only spending a little over four hours on childcare and homeschooling each working day, regardless of his employment status.
“Whatever situation you have, on average it’s the woman doing more, and it’s not because she’s working less” says Dr Christopher Rauh, an economist at Cambridge University.
The gender divide is even larger in high-income households. A mother who earns over £80,000 and is working from home is typically doing 3.3 hours of home schooling and 3.8 hours of childcare each day – over seven hours in total. A typical father who earns over £80,000 only spends 2.1 hours home schooling his children and 2.3 hours on childcare each working day – less than 4.5 hours in total.
“The higher the household income, the more time women are spending home schooling compared to men,” says Rauh. “People come up with explanations – like women are better at taking care of their children due to evolution – but if that were true, it shouldn’t apply to home schooling. Yet we also see those differences here.”
The amount of homeschooling children are receiving in lockdown appears to be particularly affected by the income of their mothers, with the lowest-paid women spending 2.1 hours a day educating their children each day (over an hour less than the highest-paid women). Fathers earning £0 to £20,000 are doing even less homeschooling (1.9 hours), but that’s still roughly the same as the higher-paid men.
The starkest gender divide among low-paid parents, however, is around childcare. Like the highest-paid women, those women earning £0 to £20,000 are doing 3.9 hours of childcare each day. By contrast, the lowest-paid men are carrying out just 2.4 hours of childcare each day.
In other words, a woman earning over £80,000 and working from home is typically spending 60% more time (an extra 1.4 hours) on childcare each working day than the average man earning £0 to £20,000.
At the same time, there is evidence that women’s contributions outside the home are decreasing. There has been a drop in the number of solo-authored academic papers submitted by women, while submissions by male academics have increased. Similarly, at the Philosophy Foundation, the majority of the organisation’s work is now being carried out by men. “This is because most of our female philosophers are having to focus on childcare and home education” says co-CEO Emma Worley.
Working Families, which runs a legal advice service for parents and carers, has seen a sixfold increase in inquiries since the lockdown began, 80% of which have come from women. “We have seen evidence from mothers that they’re being penalised and not being supported to work from home because they have children. We’ve also seen mothers having to take unpaid leave or being dismissed.”
“In a large number of cases, women are doing the vast majority of the caring for small children and the home educating work,” says Stephenson. “The men seem to be able to lock themselves away in a study, while the women are working at the kitchen table – and also trying to home-educate”
Sam Smethers, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, says the wider implications of the lockdown gender divide are clear:
“This shows that the default assumptions about who does the caring for children fundamentally haven’t shifted. It defaults to women. There’s still an expectation that women will make their jobs fit around the caring, whereas a man’s job will come first.”
Rather than addressing any of these issues, it would seem that the government in the UK is quite happy to play along with it even dabbling in some subliminal messaging to make sure we women know our place. Back in January, the government was forced to withdraw a social media advert urging people to “Stay Home. Save Lives” after it was criticised for stereotyping women and being sexist. The image showed women home schooling children and doing domestic chores, while the only man featured was depicted relaxing on a sofa.
So what can we women do about this stark unfairness? Not playing along is what we can do. It is not our role in life to be the shock absorbers of COVID-19. It is not our responsibility to shoulder most of the burden of childcare and homeschooling and for our mental health to suffer significantly as a result, as well as our careers to suffer, and our role in society to return to a 1950’s housewife. Women for the most part have obediently been doing as our patriarchal society has conditioned them to in enduring this kind of inequality. This needs to stop and things need to change. Many men are not going to start doing their fair share off their own backs- women need to have stronger boundaries and not allow this kind of treatment by society. If we go along with what is being expected of us, then no one is forced to change anything. If we say no sorry, we have our work to do and are not homeschooling the kids, this forces the government to come up with another plan which doesn’t use women. They are able to do so because we women are conditioned into feeling guilt and worry and being the good girl who is conscientious and cares for everyone at her own expense, who endures and takes the whole burden of responsibility onto her shoulders. Responsibilities but no rights has always been our way of life- not any more. We need to force that change, not wait for it to be handed into our laps. No one is holding a gun to our heads making us do this so we need to look at our own beliefs, conditioning and behaviour in being complicit in allowing the unfair treatment of women to continue.
So first sit down and work out what is fair for both to be spending on childcare and homeschooling. Create a shared calendar that shows who is the primary carer for the children every minute of the day from getting up until bedtime, with each parent expected to do equal amounts of childcare and home schooling during that period. The timing of work meetings – and exercise – must be diarised and agreed between parents, days in advance.
Make sure both parents have equal time away from the children. Do not let your partners get away with locking themselves up in the study all day whilst you juggle children and work. Keep your foot firmly up their arse which is my experience is the only way you can get some men to do their fair share. Being at home with the children 24/7 is exhausting and intense and its not fair if you have to do the majority of childcare. If your husbands thinks he’s working all day and therefore gets to have a lunchbreak and evening off doing with he likes on his own- no sorry. You’ve been with the kids all day and deserve a break from that. For your husband to spend time with the kids instead of work is a break from work. Make sure you both have opportunities for me time and exercise.
Make sure you are getting the children to do their fair share- cooking and cleaning are important life skills for them. Do not as a mother be running around like a headless chicken whilst husbands and teenage children take the piss.
Don’t be perfectionist about homeschooling. Aim for good enough and focus on fun and connection. It’s good for children not to be stimulated constantly and to get bored as this is where creativity arises. See this article for more tips:
Look after your mental health. Make not getting stressed and looking after yourself exquisitely top priority. Self care is not a luxury, it is a necessity. You deserve to be treated as a human not a shock absorber or some sort of donkey expected to carry the burden of society. You are worthy and you deserve to not run yourself ragged, exhausted from all the demands. Rest is a basic need along with food and shelter so treat it as such. Say no. Go on strike. Put your feet up and put your burden down. Rebel with rest.
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