Pandemic seen through gender
How do we support women professionally during this crisis?
Possibly because it’s sandwiched between National Cereal Day and National Barbie Day, people often miss the historical significance of International Women’s Day — March 8.
Enacted on Feb. 28, 1909, the first official “Women’s Day” was established as a day to engage in political action. It was meant to provide a space for conferences and organization, to mobilize women, particularly working women, who were routinely subjected to inhumane working conditions, sexual harassment and povertylevel wages in sweatshops, to demand change.
It seems to have been a success, given that, later that year, the “fiery” labour acitvist Clara Lemlich and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union led 15,000 “shirtwaist” (textile) workers in walking off the job. The pickets lasted two months until the garment fac- tory owners agreed to make some improvements. Sadly, it was not enough to prevent the following year’s Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire — still the worst industrial disaster in New York City in history.
“Worst” refers both to the number of casualties, 146, and the way these workers, many of whom were Jewish or Italian women and children, died on March 25, 1911. Some jumped to their death from the upper floors of the 10-storey building; others died trapped in their workspace because, to prevent employee theft, the doors were locked from the outside.
The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire is named by the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) as one of the most significant events in labour history , largely because the truth was laid bare. The horror of the garment industry’s despicable working conditions was there for all to see and it inspired activists to fight for both workplace safety laws and womens’ rights.
Since then, some women have made undeniable gains in the workforce. Some, but not all. There are actually still more unsafe workplaces and sweatshop conditions than most people care to know about and, even among those who have benefited the most from feminism, women still face a wage gap and epic sexual harassment, which has lately come to light thanks to #MeToo.
Worse still, the gains that have been made are now at risk, thanks to the pandemic, which is disproportionately affecting women and, in particular, racialized women, gender nonconforming folks and women with disabilities. This pandemic is gendered. And not in a good way.
“We know it’s going to set progress back,” says Andrea O’Reilly, professor at York University’s School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. “Some estimates have it that this is going to set women back two decades. A setback of some sort is almost a given, just because the amount of women who’ve left the workforce is staggering. People are calling it a ‘she-cession’ because it’s hit women far more than men.”
It didn’t start out that way. Men and women suffered pretty similar economic losses at the outset of the lockdowns. Nearly a year into the pandemic, though, it’s a different story.
“As we moved into the later end of the spring and summer, we saw a lot of men regain jobs, but we didn’t see women regain those jobs at the same pace,” says Jennifer Reynolds, CEO of Toronto Finance International. “The other dynamic, unfortunately, is that many women dropped out of the workforce altogether.”
Self-employment is similarly bleak. Freshbooks, an accounting software company, says that women-owned businesses in Canada are taking twice as long to recover as those owned by men.
So, what’s happening? The pandemic did have a disproportionate impact on sectors dominated by women, but, a larger factor is likely motherhood, which is the focus of a new book, co-edited by Andrea O’Reilly and Fiona Joy Green, called “Mothers, Mothering, and COVID-19: Dispatches from a Pandemic.”
“We all know men don’t do the same amount of work in the home and those stats were available long before the pandemic,” says O’Reilly, “Now, on top of everything else they’re doing, the fourth shift of homeschooling has fallen almost completely to mothers.” (The first three are childcare, housework and the actual job.)
If this were simply a matter of a lost year or so of work, it might not be such a big deal, but taking time off to care for children (and/or elderly family members) has an impact on both long-term career prospects and pension income. On average, women with children already earn less than those without, thanks to the “motherhood penalty,” which some estimate translates into a lifetime salary penalty of 5 per cent per child.
Reynolds says the two groups hit hardest have been women aged 20-24 and 35-39. Of the younger cohort, many of them are going back to school, so this might actually be a good thing for them long-term.
“But those women who are 35 to 39 and have lost their jobs, many were not even reportedly looking for work now,” she says. “That’s a really important part of your career and, if you drop out, how easy is it to just jump back in a year later or two years later? I would argue, no matter what job you have, it’s pretty difficult when you take breaks.”
The entire economy will suffer if women, who earned 43 per cent of household income in the Before Times, don’t return to good jobs, Reynolds points out. If we want to really recover, we need everyone to have economic opportunities. And, she says, that’s only the most pragmatic reason; another is that denying certain groups opportunities is simply not just.
So, what’s the best way to kickstart a “she-covery”? Access to affordable daycare is an obvious start, since the struggle to choose between work and caring for children isn’t just a thing that happens during crises. For a lot of women, that’s just reality. It goes beyond childcare, though, and, some argue that now is the time to make big changes and think on a grand scale.
“The key to addressing this issue is really taking a gendered lens to recovery starting with the people who are impacted most,” says Andrea Gunraj, vice-president of public engagement at the Canadian Women’s Foundation. “We know that women are impacted heavily and we’ve seen that the impact is different with different women depending on the issues that they experience as racialized women, Indigenous women, women with disabilities and women with immigration concerns. And these women are the women who are taking a lot of the economic fallout.”
“And the irony, of course, is that these are the women who tend to be in frontline work and the ones caring for us in the pandemic and they’re the ones who are, in many senses, the most uncared for.”
People often say that the pandemic is shining a light on existing inequalities and systemic problems of discrimination. Just like the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, the truth is laid bare.
Will the pandemic inspire people to make meaningful and substantive changes, like after the fire? Or are we willing to sit back and let progress be derailed and set back? That’s the question we need to think hard about this International Women’s Day.
It might have a hashtag, but it’s no hashtag holiday.