During the pandemic, who is responsible for domestic work in your country?
According to the new report from UN Women, women are spending more time to do domestic chores compared with the normal time.
Amid COVID-19, household chores have new purpose and value and are being increasingly recognized as a form of essential work.
Chores like cooking, shopping for groceries and cleaning, particularly to prevent infection, are all taking longer than ever.
However, more and more people have to work from home due to Covid-19 in different countries, while the truth is that women still shoulder the major housework.
Available data from thirty-eight countries overwhelmingly confirm that on sixty per cent of women and fifty-four per cent of men reported that they have increased the amount of time on unpaid domestic work.
“It was busier than before since more time spending with family”
Charlotte Gordon, who had a one-year-old baby boy and eight-year-old girl, worked from home for almost three months but then slashed during the lockdown in the UK.
“I had to breast my son, in the meantime, check my daughter’s homework who studied online. Due to the Covid-19, I was slashed by my company and became a stay-at-home mother,” said Charlotte.
Research by UN Women in sixteen countries reveals that 56 per cent of women and fifty-one per cent of men have increased the time they spend on unpaid care work.
Despite men’s increased contributions, women are still carrying the heaviest load
“I told myself you need to be happy with slash since you have more time spending by the family, while actually, I was busier than the normal time.”
“The pandemic has created so much extra work”
As Amrita, a forty-eight-year-old homemaker and a mother of two kids who reported working for more than seventy h/work during the lockdown states.
“Since the onset of the pandemic, I sanitize all the vegetables and grocery items that are purchased for the household.” Akriti highlighted shopping multiple times from the survey of the Gender Issue.
According to the survey from Gender Issue in India, thirty-five per cent and twenty-five per cent women spend more than twenty-eight h/week and fifty h/week respectively on unpaid work.
“I separately wash and sanitize all the footwear and clothes that are used while going to the supermarket.”
“Accomplishing my work is a small part of my life”
Mrs Chen is a nurse based in northwestern China, who finished her work until 5:00 pm but still needed to do other domestic chores.
“During the pandemic, I always went to bed after 11:00 pm which is later than the normal time”
“Although my husband was working from home in the Covid-19, I can not concentrate on my work, since I need to take care of him and cook meals three times in the daytime, as well as other chores,” she told the details.
In Asian, most men are androcentrism in the stereotype.
China Women’s News launched a questionnaire about how was your housework distributed during the epidemic.
Eighty-three per cent of Chinese people selected wife would be a major one to shoulder the domestic chores.
“Accomplishing my work is a small part of my life, the more complicated for me is to do various housework in the meantime and get along with my husband on the whole day.” complained by Mrs Jin.
The world problem
Various problems made women exhausted to cope, and it was not just physical exertion, and mental health.
From Covid-19 Gender Policy Response Tracker: Argentina has increased monthly child allowance payments; Australia and Costa Rica have ensured that childcare services remain open during lockdown;
Austria, Cyprus and Italy have granted additional family leave to affected working parents, and Canada, Spain and the Republic of Korea have introduced cash benefits for parents who are affected by school and daycare closures.
“To improve the gender equality, we should think of every single woman in the living environment We need to dig deeper and Imbalanced distribution of domestic chores still need more concentrations in the world, which is not the specific problem in the specific areas.” from Dr Zhang who is also a mother of a two-year-old child, focused on gender studies in the University of Birmingham.