Some researchers think the pandemic could change the landscape of gender roles in the United States.
There’s no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically changed daily life around the country. Stay-at-home orders mean people are now weeks into working from home, and some are furloughed or unemployed. Children aren’t in school, so parents are now adding teacher and playmate to the list of daily roles they must adopt.
One of the things that hasn’t changed—at least in the short term—is how much more domestic work women are taking on. Childcare is largely falling on mom, along with cooking, cleaning and everything else needed to keep a household running. But long term? Some researchers think the pandemic could change the landscape of gender roles in the United States.
“If a man can’t work because his company laid him off, but his wife can, there’s no shame in it because we’re in the midst of a pandemic and this is happening to millions of people,” says Joelle Jarvis, founder of the Mindset Partnership and executive coach. “So all the judgments and societal expectations, all the ‘shoulds’—they’ve been temporarily lifted. There’s freedom in that. I think it’s a hard reset.”
Historically, pandemics have created world change. Big, upending events in this country have changed gender norms before. Look at World War II. Men dropped whatever they had been doing and became soldiers. Women—including many married women (a population that largely didn’t work at that time)—took up the men’s jobs in factories to keep the country running and contribute to the war effort. Remember Rosie the Riveter?
More recently, the Great Recession prompted another change. It created the largest jobless rate among American men since World War II. Men accounted for 5.4 million, or 71 percent, of the 7.5 million jobs that disappeared from the U. S. economy between December 2007 and June 2009—more than double the number of jobs women lost. Some of those jobs never came back. And the main earner role flipped within many marriages with millions of women becoming the main earners by default.
Today, women are still working—and many of them are the main earners for their households. Forty-two percent of moms are the sole or primary breadwinners for their families. And 52 percent of the country’s essential workers are women. That means men are necessarily taking up childcare and household duties around the country. With two working parents at home—or even dad at home and mom on the frontlines—and no childcare help, millions of parents have had to share childcare and household duties in new ways.
Additionally, many families are being forced to choose between mom’s career or dad’s career—because someone has to care for their children. These days, it’s no longer a given that mom will give hers up.
Leah Bonvissuto is the founder ofPresentVoices, a consultancy that provides virtual communication coaching for spontaneous speaking. When their nanny was unable to work for them anymore, she says she and her husband realized one of them had to stop working to care for their toddler.
Although she is the main breadwinner, many of their friends and family kept insisting that her husband, who worked in administration at a nearby hospital, keep his job. Ultimately, though, she and her husband agreed that he should stay home.
“I know many women are in this position right now, and many are being forced to sacrifice their careers, as women always have,” she says.
