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It has been described as the shadow pandemic, the way Covid has so disproportionately affected women’s lives, from the boardroom to the kitchen table. Those effects range from the almost impossible combination of work and homeschooling, to the worldwide increase in domestic abuse and child marriages.
At its most basic level, it’s that women will tell you anecdotally that a conversation about Seesaw would cause many parents to assume that the topic under discussion is play equipment, rather than the remote learning technology favored by Irish elementary schools. .
In a world where female equality has made great strides in some areas but remains uneven, if not seemingly desperate in too many others, Covid has been a major blow to the cause. The pandemic has clearly affected everyone in some way, regardless of gender. However, women have been the ones who have taken over most, if not all, of the slack when it comes to childcare, homeschooling and home maintenance. A year later, many women are stunned to find themselves reduced to a gender stereotype from the 1950s.
You will hardly meet a woman who does not benefit from a call to a telephone line established by called the Primal Scream Line. Callers are told that the floor is theirs to “scream, laugh, cry or vent for a full minute.” Even mothers who have not been financially affected by the virus will say that the pressure has been enormous trying to keep up with work, school, doing laundry, cooking, and keeping children in balance, while mostly they cannot find free personal moments. absolutely. Then there’s the everlasting knowledge that you have to get up tomorrow and do the exact same thing over and over again.
Even before the pandemic, according to the UN, it was estimated that women performed around 75% of the 16 billion hours of unpaid work done each day around the world. Amina Mohammed’s UN Under-Secretary-General has said that Covid runs the risk of rolling back women’s rights by decades.
Last month, Kamala Harris, the vice president of the United States, said that the 2.5 million women who left the workforce since the beginning of the pandemic constituted a “national emergency.” Of that number, black mothers, Hispanic mothers and single mothers are among the most affected. The United States is estimated to have returned to the levels of women in the workforce of the 1980s. Women have left work or reduced their hours.
For many women, the return to the workforce was based on the children starting school. Childcare arrangements used to be a mix of formal and informal, but the pandemic has turned it all upside down. Even if both parents were working full-time and had properly structured full-time childcare, this option has simply disappeared, all in the blink of an eye.
A recent UK survey by the Trade Union Congress (TUC) also found that the burden of juggling work and care falls primarily on mothers. Of the more than 50,000 who responded to the survey, 25% were concerned about losing their jobs by being singled out for layoffs, layoffs or denied hours. A quarter used annual leave to manage childcare, but 18% had been forced to reduce their working hours and around 7% took unpaid vacation and had no income.
It has reached women everywhere. In the EU, 76% of health workers are women, which means that women in this profession have come under incredible pressure on them in the last year, especially those with children.
The most recent figures from the CSO show that, in the last quarter of 2020, total part-time employment fell by 58,000 from the previous year. Surprisingly, of that number, almost 43,000 were women. The lost jobs were in hotels, restaurants, shops, and in places like cinemas and museums.
In February, in its ongoing surveys showing the social impact of Covid, specifically the impact of school closures, the CSO reported that more than 70% of respondents who are employed and had a child in elementary school said the School closings since Christmas had had an impact. in your work pattern. Women were more likely to report an impact, 74%, compared with just over 64% of men.
Women were also more likely to have taken unpaid leave (just over 9% compared to just 0.4% of men) and to have switched to working from home (almost 17% compared to slightly more than 9% of men).
Digging deeper into the CSO numbers, it is interesting to note that a survey conducted last April found that, of those who were new to working from home then, nearly half of the women said they would like to return to their workplace. after the restrictions were lifted. , compared to less than one in three men. Where would those numbers be today?
CSO statistic Claire Burke said at the time that the difference can be partly explained by the fact that a previous survey had found that more women than men were caring for a dependent family member or friend due to the Covid crisis, than women they were more likely to report Covid-related childcare problems, and women had a harder time working from home due to the presence of family.
However, it is interesting to note that there were no large variations in these figures between genders. For example, 11% of women said it was more difficult to work from home because family was close compared to 9% of men.
The Director of the National Council of Women of Ireland, Orla O’Connor, recently said that the restrictions imposed as a result of the pandemic have exposed the profound structural inequality of care in our society, where women in Ireland continue to provide the vast majority of it. . He said CSO data indicates that women made up 94% of those who cared for the home or family in 2019.
“As a society, when we move into the recovery phase, we urgently need to address this inequality, which requires public investment in care and a redistribution of care responsibilities between women and men,” she said.
There is some comfort in the plethora of coverage on this topic, but so far the policy responses have really been non-existent. If we think back to last October’s budget, generous in many ways in relation to Covid, not once was childcare mentioned.
Our Citizens Assembly on gender equality has undoubtedly been influenced in its ongoing deliberations by how women have been affected by Covid. Hopefully he will make meaningful recommendations on issues like job flexibility and parental leave. The president of the assembly, Dr. Catherine Day, has speculated that there may be recommendations for “big changes.”
What has happened over the past year has made women’s time seem worth much less, while also reinforcing the man’s hunter-gatherer role. Big changes are urgently needed. The government could start with an accurate assessment of the impact of Covid on Irish women and their careers.
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