The Pandemic Suffering Gap Is Real

I don’t want need a clever intro to this piece. I’d rather start with the bottom line: women are carrying an unequal share of the burden and suffering from the pandemic than men.

It’s not fair, it’s not equitable — and men have a responsibility to level the playing field, which in turn will help benefit us all.

I’m not referring just to case counts and fatalities, though women are in positions of greater risk of being exposed to the coronavirus than men.

And one ginormous caveat upfront: I live alone, I am not a parent. I have no home-schooling responsibilities to share, I have no household duties at all to share. In other words, it’s easy for me to say. I get that.

But facts are facts.

More than a third of working women work in industries (health care, and leisure and hospitality) that have been significantly impacted by the pandemic.

Fewer than 16% of working men are in those fields.

And women are paid less to be exposed to increased risk in both of those fields.

Another important field is teaching. Women make up nearly three-quarters of schoolteachers.

With plans for the upcoming semester still undefined at best (hint: we’re not ready) not only do teachers face an uncertain professional future, but they potentially face risks to their health if they return to the classroom.

The Pay Gap is Fueling the Pandemic Suffering Gap

The pay gap is unfair as it is; the link above points out that women are paid more than 20% less than men with similar experience and education.

Women doctors get paid 12% less than male doctors, women waitresses get paid 12% less than male waiters.

But that pay gap is driving further inequality within the home, forcing couples who are parents into choices that shift home-schooling responsibilities and domestic management onto women.

Because those domestic responsibilities and management — let’s call it domestic labor, because that’s what it is, work — are so difficult and time-consuming, and because the duration of that labor is now indefinite, with no vaccine and no real solution to the pandemic in sight, it’s become impossible to perform that labor and hold a job at the same time.

So parents are choosing for the partner with the higher salary to keep that job, and the person with the lower salary to give up their job, and in some cases, their career. Because of the pay gap, most times it’s the woman who must opt out of the work force.

This could have devastating long-terms effects on the professional lives of women. Women already provide the majority of child care during standard working hours, now they are spending on average more than 15 hours per week on domestic labor than men.

The blame of some of this falls on men’s shoulders; these issues, both the wage and domestic labor gap, existed long before Covid-19 arrived.

But the pandemic has taken our social issues and magnified them. It has strained us in ways we were already being strained.

But not all of the blame falls on men, and not all of this can be fixed by men vowing to be better.

Our systems are failing us, and we’re all going to have to do the hard work, under the most trying of circumstances, to repair them

These are long-standing systemic issues. It will take a movement with concentrated effort and devotion to level the playing field.

But if ever there were a moment to seize a chance to better our society, this is it.

And it starts with vocalizing what we want to achieve and what we want our outcomes to be as we collectively define and create a new normal.

Gender Equity is the Goal

To resolve these issues, to attain equality for women, we must start by stating that goal as clearly as possible.

Women deserve and are entitled to equal pay as men. Women likewise deserve and are entitled to professional opportunities and recognition that is equal to men.

And while domestic labor ultimately is negotiated and managed by each individual couple, men need to acknowledge the existence and challenges of domestic labor — and actively pitch in more.

The extremes and duress of our capitalist society are unforgiving on us all. We have paltry family leave policies; corporate lifestyles punishes parents. We are stressed and over-worked.

So what is there to do besides bemoan the problem and acknowledge its existence?

Speak up.

In times of financial insecurity, the instinct, the reflex, will be to stay quiet, to take what you’ve got and not rock the boat. And that’s understandable.

So many of our lives are so fragile, the risks of challenging systemic inequality can seem too daunting — and come at too high a cost.

But we can’t stay silent. One must advocate, in ways large and small, for our values — even in the workplace.

Share your salary with co-workers, especially women. Tell your managers and HR departments that you value salary equity.

Women have been arguing and fighting for equal pay for decades. It’s time for men to join the fight, too, and not just as a sign or show of solidarity, but as a means of building consensus.

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Do We Value Families Or Not?

I have a co-worker who is a mother of a nine-month-old. She’s had to cut back on her working hours so she can tend to the baby, who is now crawling and lot more squirrelly.

Thankfully, the organization I work for is listening to the needs of parents and caretakers — and helping our staff balance those needs with the work we’re getting paid to do.

If only this attitude were more pervasive.

We’re a country and society propelled and often controlled by capitalism and corporate philosophy. More, more, more. More production, more labor, more hours, better margins.

It has not only led to widening income inequality but created lives for even those in the best jobs that are miserable and bereft of any recognition of a world outside the office.

It leads to attitudes and cases like this one, where a woman claims she was fired because her toddler was too disruptive during her work.

At its root, what this case represents is a mentality and attitude that is antagonistic towards non-work life, towards families, towards a working mother.

It is one that makes a person’s well-being and livelihood dependent on ignoring the needs of her family.

That is bad enough in normal times. During a pandemic, it is heartless, insensitive, most likely short-sighted and an insult to parents.

It is the polar opposite of what we want and expect not just out of our jobs, but our lives. It is an ethos we must push back on, both men and women, parents and non-parents.

We’re at the point where people, more women than men, are having to choose between working and parenting. More than quarter of parents might be have to leave the workforce. It’s unacceptable.

The Need for Day Care

Even the most accessible, cost-friendly, engaging day-care for kids would be facing challenges related to the pandemic. Anything that involves putting a lot of people, even toddlers, in a room or building together poses risks.

But when we emerge from this, one thing we should focus on as a society is stabilizing and improving our tenuous and fragile day care system.

Day care is critical both for child development and for working parents.

We need to do more to support the day care system in this country, so that all families and kids have reliable access to it. It should not be a luxury. Early childhood education is one of the best investments we can make in our future.

As many as 40% of our nation’s day care centers might have to permanently close due to pressures of the pandemic. The consequences would be devastating to both children and parents alike.

It’s not a coincidence that the things that are best for kids, for families, for parents, for society at large also happen to be the things that could be most helpful for women.

Why?

Because women are already doing so much to carry the burden of managing our families and relationships and workplaces. If we support women, all of society benefits. And there’s a logical next step to that…

It Starts at the Top

The surest way to ensure greater equity across our society is to put women in positions of leadership. Our society is designed by and for men, from everything to medicine to car safety.

Not only do we need women in the room when decisions are made, from everything to computer software to public policy, we would probably all be better off if women were running the show.

At least we’d have a better shot of being alive.

Too far a stretch? Per capita, countries led by women have one-fifth the amount of Covid-19 deaths than countries led by men.

Whether it’s a more cooperative leadership style, or a different value system, or a greater willingness to listen to others, countries led by women have fared better in responding to the virus. It’s painful knowing our country had that chance and missed it.

The pandemic is forcing us to take a long look at the mirror, as a country, a society, as families, as individuals.

Let’s be honest about it. Let’s recognize who is being hurt most by the pandemic. As we try to both endure this time period and envision a future after it, all of us, especially men, need to do more to ensure gender equity.

For the sake of women, and for the sake of us all.

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This post was previously published on Medium.com.

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