An article from Forbes looks at how the new coronavirus and efforts to fight COVID-19 are affecting women—especially at home, where they’re increasingly wearing many hats as children are home from school. Researchers look at how the crisis could affect men’s and women’s roles at home and at work, from more flexible work arrangements to finally moving closer to equal roles in the home—a development that could benefit women as well as men.
By Brianna Wiest, Forbes
Women are at the helm of fighting COVID-19.
It’s not just that women make up 91% of nurses, 74% of healthcare workers and almost 62% of pharmaceutical professions. Having nearly half of the world’s children home from school means that many mothers are trying to teach, caretake and manage their workload simultaneously.
This is a significant challenge for most families, and is positioning us for an interesting gender role reversal, one that might be unprecedented in this century.
According to new research from Matthias Doepke and Jane Olmstead-Rumsey of Northwestern University, Titan Alon of the University of California San Diego and Michèle Tertilt of the University of Mannheim, the COVID-19 crisis might generate change in gender norms that defines our new “normal” in the decades to come. In the same way that WWII shifted these roles by putting more women in the workforce, COVID-19 is spurring a surge of male caregivers, as women make up the majority of “essential” jobs.
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