At the start of the corona crisis, I felt a small glimmer of hope that something positive might come out of this in the way of redressing gender inequality in the household. With more men at home, perhaps the work of maintaining a clean and functional household would be visibilised, creating an opportunity for women’s care burden to be alleviated. And while it was clear that the impact of Covid-19 on men and women would be different (men carry a higher risk of mortality from the virus, while women faced greater economic consequences, risk of violence, and were at the front line of the health response), and that there was a risk that women’s care burden would be increased, the prospect of this potential win for gender equality carried me through.
In the face of these odds, let me explain my hope. Facing a situation where both parents (this article refers primarily to heterosexual couples) and their child(ren) were stuck at home, day in, day out, it seemed possible that the schooling and care needs of children and mounting housework would become more visible to men, thereby resolving the double (even, triple) burden faced by women. Indeed, research has shown that major changes to domestic routines can have the potential to equalize the domestic burden. And potentially, once the viability of remote working became clear to employers, men’s demands for more time working from home, in order to play a more meaningful role in the lives of their children, might be met.
And yet, more than 3 months into the pandemic, reports across Europe show that the crisis is increasing gender inequality, threatening to derail women’s careers. The risk that women’s care burden would be increased, rather than reduced, has become the reality. In the UK, for example, The Guardian reports that “the proportion of mothers responsible for 90 to 100% of childcare increased from 27% to 45% during lockdown.”[1] While men are also contributing more in the household, this does not seem to be the gender equality ‘win’ that some may think. A survey conducted for the New York Times shows that 70% of women report being fully or mostly responsible for housework and 66% for childcare.[2] Similarly, research in The Netherlands into the division of labour between parents in lockdown found that, from a survey of more than 800 participants, 65% of mothers report doing more in the household than their partner.[3] These figures roughly equates to the same proportion as outside of lockdown. And why? Because we still see housework as a woman’s responsibility.
At the same time, women’s opportunities outside the house are being limited too. Over the past few months, we have seen that women’s work is more vulnerable and they are more likely to have lost their job, be furloughed, or have reduced working hours. And the impact is still not over: as governments roll back economic support schemes, we can expect more layoffs, which are more likely to affect women. The American bank Citigroup has calculated that we may see huge layoffs among women, comprising 31 million of the 44 million people who are at risk of losing their jobs due to the corona crisis.
Furthermore, with all of us spending more time at home, and limited space at schools and nurseries, women are more likely to be caring for children and responsible for home schooling, whether they are working or not. If they are working, they are still more likely to be interrupted and have to balance work and childcare or education. In the New York Times survey, nearly half of fathers with children under 12 report spending more time on home schooling than their spouse. Just 3% of mothers say the same, while 80% say they spend more on time on home schooling than their spouse.[4] This correlates to findings from the University of Sussex which found that 72% of mothers described themselves as the “default” parent for all or most of the time during lockdown, and 70% of women reported being completely or mostly responsible for home schooling.[5]
Consequently, mothers are only doing a third of the uninterrupted paid-work hours that fathers are.[6] This imbalance in caring responsibilities is compounded by employers attitudes, who are less understanding of interruptions to the work of their male employees compared to female employees. In fact, research conducted in the UK by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and UCL found that the only households where mothers and fathers are now sharing childcare and housework equally are those in which the father has stopped paid work while the mother is still working for pay.[7] Even today, men are characterized as the breadwinner while women are expected to carry the burden of care.
The greater value that is given to men’s work means women are more likely to be pushed back into the home environment, taking us back to a 1950s style society. The closure of schools and nurseries has increased the care load in the household; a responsibility primarily filled by women. And with this happening against the backdrop of the militaristic rhetoric that has been “deployed” to “fight the virus,” the door has been opened for machoistic behaviours and attitudes. Just in the past few days, Boris Johnson has been photographed doing push-ups in order to assuage rumours about his health, while Tony Blair has boasted of the fact that he hasn’t done any housework since 1997. What kind of society do we live in where that is a legitimate boast? One which devalues care work, thereby making this a statement of power.
So instead of progress we are actually seeing a regression towards traditional domestic gender roles. Of course, everyone has just been doing their best to muddle through this mess and that’s meant taking the most straightforward and economically sound decisions to ensure the bills get paid and there’s food on the table. Yet, as long as the attitudes of leaders and employers reinforce those decisions, this will be a trap that is hard to get out of; the repercussions of those decisions and gender stereotypes embedded in our social structures could mean long lasting implications for women’s careers. During times of crisis, we still see women’s work being threatened and deprioritized, thereby reinforcing traditional gender roles. We need to make this the conversation, rather than how many push-ups a prime minister can do.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2020/jun/18/uk-society-regressing-back-to-1950s-for-many-women-warn-experts-worsening-inequality-lockdown-childcare
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/upshot/pandemic-chores-homeschooling-gender.html
[3] https://www.trouw.nl/binnenland/coronacrisis-raakt-vrouwen-het-hardst-thuis-en-op-het-werk~bb0a017b/
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/upshot/pandemic-chores-homeschooling-gender.html
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2020/jun/18/uk-society-regressing-back-to-1950s-for-many-women-warn-experts-worsening-inequality-lockdown-childcare
[6] https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/14861
[7] ibid