The latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are showing that nearly 80 percent of the 1.1 million people who left the work force in September 2020 were women. More women of color, in particular, have stopped working outside the home. Economists say this disparity between men and women points to the disproportionate extent to which women are assuming increased responsibility for childcare responsibilities during the COVID 19 pandemic.
You may be saying to yourself, “no kidding.” In many families, women have found themselves stepping into the gap created by closed child care centers, online education, and limited extracurricular activities. The time that children spent engaged in these other ways enabled many women to hold down a job prior to the pandemic. Many grandparents and other family members whom women may have depended upon to provide even intermittent or backup support now fall into higher risk populations and have had to stand down.
Quite simply, when families are looking at what has to happen on the home front in order to manage the children during this pandemic, often the woman’s job is the logical thing to cut. Even with advances in education and affirmative action, women are still overrepresented in certain lower paying professions that have been particularly impacted by social isolation measures during the pandemic: more women than men are employed in the lower strata of healthcare as well as in the hospitality and food service industries. The gender wage gap also plays a role here. women still earn, on average across all races and social strata, 81 cents for every dollar earned by men. It’s just basic math.
For women who have been able to maintain their employment by transitioning to telework, the scene is far from serene. Zoom calls are happening across the kitchen table from elementary school children who need frequent assistance with technical problems or who have questions about assignments. There are young children in the background playing (hopefully!). Teenagers still require at least a baseline awareness as to their whereabouts and activities. The dog is whimpering for attention or wanting to be let out. The cat is walking across the keyboard. For many women who have worked hard to maintain privacy and boundaries between work and family in order to be “professional” and protect their advancement opportunities, the tapestry of family life is now on full display for their colleagues.
Amidst all these employment-related upheavals, there is still the ever-present mental load that women have been demonstrated to assume in the home, ie. remembering to drop by the store for milk, replacing boots that have been outgrown as winter approaches and staying on top of routine medical and dental appointments for the family. There may be some new things on the mental load list that are unique to the circumstances of the pandemic, ie. assuring an adequate supply of masks for all family members, shopping for family members who are ill or higher risk and the seemingly never ending need to assess the associated risk for every activity undertaken outside the home.
When we started with this “new normal” in March, most of us figured things would have returned to some semblance of what we had known before by now. The concept, last March, that we could be looking at a year or more of making it up as we go along was unthinkable. And yet here we are. For many women, coping with the new expectations is just plain overwhelming. There may be larger financial concerns. Or frustration with lost opportunities. Or guilt upon realizing that staying home with children all day – even though we love them dearly – is hard work. Regardless of what is challenging you, in particular, finding ways to get support and rejuvenate within the confines of what is “safe” is critical to getting up and doing it all again tomorrow.
Carrell, R. (2019, August 19). Let’s share women’s mental load. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelcarrell/2019/08/15/lets-share-womens-mental-load/#857876d6bd61
Ebbert, S. (2020, October 3). Women leaving workforce in droves. The Boston Globe, pp. D1
PayScale. The state of the gender paygap 2020. https://www.payscale.com/data/gender-pay-gap#section02 (retrieved October 5, 2020).