While men are twice as likely to die from the coronavirus, women are battling a centuries-long shadow pandemic that has moved even deeper into the dark recesses of the public conscience: gender roles. As the pandemic drags on and lockdowns are extended, existing gender roles become further and further entrenched. Women’s unpaid labor is an invisible reality in societies around the world, and, as childcare options and service providers diminish or are severely disrupted as a result of this pandemic, this unpaid labor is multiplied. While such changes may be haphazardly dismissed as temporary, this ignores the fact that men’s unpaid labor has not concurrently increased to the same degree during this crisis, and also fails to account for the fact that the longer these ‘temporary’ changes stay in place, the more likely they are to become permanent. Once lockdowns are eventually lifted, the sheer economic and societal disruptions wrought by the coronavirus will have shaped a new world order, in which gender norms have regressed and become even more difficult to escape from.
Sociologist Arlie Hochschild refers to women’s work in the household as “the second shift”, wherein once they come home from their paid job, their unpaid work begins. A 2013 study by the Pew Research Center, for instance, found that American mothers spend on average 31 hours per week on unpaid work, compared to the 17 hours per week devoted by fathers. A similar study by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2015, found that half of American women reported doing housework every day, compared to just one-fifth of men. Granted, American fathers spend on average 40 hours a week on paid work, compared to 23 hours for mothers; however, more women are gaining full-time employment, yet the disparity in the division of household labor is not decreasing. Despite more and more women entering the workforce, their second shift still endures–women continue to have less leisure time than their male partners.
These gendered imbalances are even wider in more conservative and traditional societies. A 2014 study by the OECD Gender, Institution, and Development Database, for example, indicates that the “female-to-male ratio of time devoted to unpaid care work” in Pakistan and India is 10.25 and 9.83, respectively–the worst among all the countries studied. Indian women on average spend six hours a day “managing the home”, while Indian men spend a measly 52 minutes. The next highest country on the list is Algeria, with 6.75. More developed and liberal countries like Denmark, the US, Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, and the UK have ratios below 2.
During this pandemic, the closure of nurseries, schools, and babysitting facilities and services have moved childcare from the paid economy entirely to the unpaid one. It is estimated that 1.5 billion children across the globe are out of school right now. Sharing childcare responsibilities with neighbors and friends is discouraged due to social distancing guidelines, while ‘grandparent-provided childcare’ has fallen as the elderly are, largely-speaking, the most at-risk group for the coronavirus. In addition, in the US alone, it is estimated that 40 million Americans, mostly women, provide care for the elderly, either neighbors or relatives. Given that several vital services are disrupted and that the aged population is the most vulnerable to COVID-19, women are having to double up on the care they already provide for them. Considering that women’s second shifts have already been expanded, caring for the elderly has now burdened them with a third and fourth shift as well.
In countries like India, middle-class women rely on some combination of maids, drivers, gardeners, laundrymen, garbage collectors, and small vendors who bring essential goods to their doorsteps to reduce women’s disproportionate workload. During the lockdown, several of these vital services have either shut down or been severely disrupted, saddling women with even more unpaid work.
Alongside an increased workload, women are also more in danger of domestic violence and intimate partner violence as a result of shelter-at-home orders. An alarming deterioration of women’s safety has been observed around the globe. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has warned of a potential rise in female genital mutilation, and also of early, child, and forced marriages due to “poor visibility and weakened protection systems”. In many areas of the world where female education is not prioritized unless legislated, school closures adversely affect girls’ ability to escape patriarchal societies and households and gain financial independence. For example, during the Ebola crisis in Africa in 2014, when several schools across the continent were closed, a rise in teenage pregnancies resulted in many girls having to drop out of school once the closures were lifted to take care of their newborns. Consequently, the viral outbreak had robbed them of their futures and indentured them to unequal gender roles and a life of servitude.
Even women who are gainfully employed are at risk of succumbing to these same overbearing, misogynistic structures. Women make up more than half of low-wage workers in every state of the US, and low wage workers are the most expendable during times of economic turmoil such as this one. In the UK, women are one-third more likely than men to work in a sector that is now shut down. Furthermore, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, across the globe, women comprise more than 60% of workers who have lost their jobs as a result of the ongoing crisis. The situation is even more dire worldwide, with hundreds of millions of women employed in low-skilled and low-wage jobs, often in the informal sector, where labor rights are even more limited.
Moreover, even women who are able to stay employed are pressured to relinquish those jobs. The partners and families of such women may consider their jobs, and indeed their desire to work, more expendable than those of their male partners and counterparts. For instance, during the 2014 Ebola crisis, the 2015-16 Zika crises, and recent outbreaks of SARS, swine flu, and bird flu, it was women who were forced to take time off work to take care of children. Furthermore, given the second ‘shifts’ that women are saddled with even at the best of times, and the third and fourth shifts they take on during crises, the stress of having to juggle so many tasks often forces women to quit their jobs of their own “volition” in any case.
The lifting of restrictions on movement and labor does not result in everything returning back to “normal” either. For example, after the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, “men’s income returned to what they had made pre-outbreak faster than women’s income”, thus extending women’s financial dependence and vulnerability.
Therefore, the coronavirus-induced disruption to the global economy has exacerbated the already disparate division of unpaid labor between men and women in households across the globe. In addition, extended lockdowns and the ensuing lack of oversight have empowered men to abuse their positions of relative power to subjugate women to unparalleled dangers. While authorities seek to contain the virus and ensure a return to normalcy, many women are having to come to terms with the reality that years of progress–no matter how little–towards breaking down gender norms, roles, and stereotypes have potentially been undone. As lockdowns are slowly lifted, already battle-weary women may well return to an uncertain world, with new scars and with even less agency than they had before.
Has the Coronavirus Crisis Further Entrenched Gender Roles?
Years of progress towards breaking down gender roles are potentially being undone.
May 2, 2020
IMAGE SOURCE: FITAlongside an increased workload, women are also more in danger of domestic violence and intimate partner violence as a result of shelter-at-home orders.