Who’s watching the kids? For many families, the answer falls along predictable gender lines, as women attempt to balance their jobs with unpaid caregiving. In her March 19, 2020 essay in The Atlantic, Helen Lewis contends that this gender divide matters, especially in pandemics. Lewis looks at the current crisis as well as past pandemics worldwide to demonstrate the risks of taking “a gender-neutral approach to pandemics.”
Helen Lewis, “The Coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism,” The Atlantic, 19 March 2020
- Lewis argues that women are more likely to do unpaid “looking after” care than men. Who (and what) need “looking after,” both during a pandemic and in ordinary circumstances? What are the economic and cultural reasons why this unpaid extra labor falls predominately to women? Why is this sometimes called the “second shift?” How does the current pandemic, with its stay-at-home orders, exasperate this long-standing gender imbalance?
- Lewis cites research that shows that gender inequality doesn’t end after pandemics are over. What secondary consequences of pandemics lead to lasting gender disparity? The researchers Lewis includes in this conversation studied the effects of other recent pandemics in West Africa. What were these past pandemics? Why do you think Lewis chooses to expand the scope of her evidence beyond the United States and the current pandemic? Find one place where she presents research from a past pandemic, and describe how she summarizes this research in light of her own argument, as recommended in Chapter 2.
- This argument focuses on dual-income, heterosexual couples with childcare responsibilities. What other perspectives are missing in this conversation? Compose a two- or three-sentence naysayer argument for this missing perspective, following the strategies explained in Chapter 6: introduce the objection, represent the objection fairly, and answer the objection.
- Lewis argues that “a pandemic magnifies all existing inequalities.” This claim is echoed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, an immunologist and lead member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Watch his April 7, 2020 statement here. What disparities does the pandemic draw attention to, according to Fauci? Reflect on other existing inequalities that the current crisis highlights (i.e. class, ethnicity, disability, access to technology.) Use a specific example to describe the inequalities you have noticed, and explain a possible long-term solution that could rectify this inequity.
They Say I Blog 
Women tend to get the short end of the stick in all circumstances, the coronavirus not being any different. The social norm is that when you need someone to watch your kids because no one else can, It’s the mom. Women are staying home watching kids while the men work and it’s taking a large toll. The economic value of women’s jobs won’t resolve to what they were previously as fast as man’s jobs would. In my family, both parents worked and I stayed home cause my learning, as well as my sisters, were remote. My mom came home from work and went straight to my sisters to help do their homework. It took a huge mental toll on her and everyone else in the world dealing with such situations. It’s not just American women being “greedy” and wanting money, health mental and physical have plummeted.
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I think it’s unfortunate how women were kind of thrown into the old school ways of being a stay at home mom or a caregiver to family members who had become sick during the pandemic. Most were still trying to keep their jobs, work from home, and home school their kids. Financially women took a bigger hit during this time as well. A lot of employers didn’t understand the toll that this took on everyone. The men/dads were not nearly effected. Their lives didn’t change. Even the ones who began working from home, just worked from home. Most did not pick up the slack of all the at home duties as well. It’s just assumed to be a woman’s job, because they are good at it and can handle it all.
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Lewis proposes that women are more likely to be the ones to do unpaid care more so than men; part of the reason for this is the idea of gender roles and workforce structure. As Lewis puts it, those who need “looking after” are older isolated people, children who are not in school, and other families unable to fully care for themselves. The amount of care needed by these individuals can amount to a whole shift of work, so it is like trying to work a second job, hence the “second shift.”
Lewis cites research from the British Government that 40 percent of employed women work part-time while only 13 percent of men do the same. This most likely means that the women would be the lower earners, and it only makes sense that those jobs are less impactful on the family dynamic. There has been much improvement and change over the years in this regard, but it has not entirely been eliminated.
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After reading this article “Bearing the burden” there is lot of statements that I do agree with. The statements that I agree with in ths article is that single parents face harder dececiosn when it came to the pandemic because, they have to deal with trying to earn money and take kid of their kids a well since schools were closed down. That can cause more stress to be put on that parent since they’re the on;y parent that is present in the children’s life. Another statemen that stood out to me was how there is a mass entry of women into workforce but the how the “second shift” stills exist. Second shift refers to how women still should come home and do housework and take care of everyone in the household. And my opinion on that I feel like the “second shift” so have no gender labled to it because it takes two people to make children and it should be two parents to care for their children, and rasie a household.
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I loved this article. I felt as if Helen really gets her points across. When being stuck inside a home for a long period of time – in a family who is more responsible for the children? Usually the women – even though it shouldn’t be that way , it is. She stressed that ever since the pandemic, women are being looked at as caregivers more now than ever. They are expected to not only care for children, but go and do chores around the home and make food for their families. She also discusses the workforce and how women have been discriminated against for years. Even though women were born natural caretakers – that shouldn’t always be their responsibility. Not only does a women’s physical health matter – especially in a pandemic, but mentally, they matter so much.
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It’s such a great article on how Helen Lewis argument throughout the article is that women are more likely than men to be the one’s caring for children. I mean people still get confusing with Feminism sometime especially when it come to their duty toward their family. Woman still work as the full time job as a housewife even they connect themselves the the outside work. We could understand that woman still stand the main role for taking good care of their children, but if we combine those work together, it’s be overload for her and it’s the reason that she need support from her partner.
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Helen Lewis makes a very good argument about how women are more depended on during the COVID-19 pandemic by giving specific examples and explaining how women are “known to be” caretakers and do more house work than leisure around. My experience, with this same situation, is actually brought up in the article. My mom is a single mom, we live together, just us. When COVID hit, I was 16 and a junior in high school. My mom was super strict about leaving me home alone for long periods of time (she works from 8AM-6PM) Once schools closed, my mom did not really know what to do, so it got to a point where she would just take me to work with her. I would have to sit around all day, do my school work and keep a mask on for 10 hours a day, for 5 days a week. Eventually, I got sick of this and finally convinced her to let me stay home, and even that got boring, due the fact that I was in the house all day, could not hang out with friends, and could not do the activities I wanted to do because the pandemic. So yeah, women are the most depended on and I definitely agree with Lewis’ argument, because I have had my own fair share of experience with this same topic/
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I agree when the author points out that women are underpaid not only during pandemics but in regular basis. But that it has being happening for many years since women decided to start working in jobs that only men were performing. My first point it is going to be based in the change women made in the world since the 50’s to these days. Everything in history has periods, those periods are ending most of the time with a change called revolution. Women changed history performing jobs that normally were only for men and I think in the future we are going to be equally paid. Women nowadays are getting higher education compared to women 10 or 20 years ago and I believe this is the way for “us “to get a place in society other than a housewife.
I think it was unnecessary for the author to emphasize in the consequences the pandemic had for women in specific. The pandemic affected everybody in different levels and the consequences are obviously catastrophic for the economy. We need to remember that after all, the fact of a man making more money that a woman, is still a reality. So, when the time comes taking a decision of who is going to work and who is staying with the kids, I think it depends on who is going to be able to provide more economic support for the family.
Lewis concludes her article “(…) We knew all this, and they didn’t listen. So why would they listen to something about women?” (721). I agree with the statement. First because its true that we all knew this economic collapse was coming, but it was impossible stopped it. I think the government of United States cushion the impact in the economy with a perfect system that it has been helping their citizens not only during the pandemic, but for many years. At this point, I don’t see how much the disadvantages are for a woman, when the government provides them with healthcare (maybe not very efficient, but it is there) economic support for their kids (single moms) free education, even food stamps, and other benefits. I’m going to make a comparation between United States and a random third world country (and I can do this because I come from a foreign country) where poverty numbers are higher and governments do not provide good healthcare, there is no food stamps, free education for kids is equal to nothing, and that people was dealing with the pandemic consequences too. I don’t think the main problem here is about gender equality, I think the problems in the hole world go farther that that.
People can work for a better future, women can fight for their rights, as long as we live in a non-communist country, we have the power to decide our future.
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As I read the article written by Helen Lewis on Bearing the Burden I was eager to learn more about her thoughts on this particular issue. Lewis strongly argues the fact woman are the care givers in their home no matter what time of day or what is happening the world. Most woman are single parent mothers who get little to no help or support from men. Woman are the sole providers, care tackers, money manager and most important lover to their children. The burden is deeply depended upon the female because growing up we learned we take care of the home while the many take care of making the bacon (money).Because in today’s society woman should not get paid for their service when it comes to caring for their children they are left to figure out how they will make ends meet.
Woman take pay cuts, miss days of work, lose their jobs during the pandemic because they have to provide for their family. Likewise a man gets to hold his job, go to work and enjoy a day’s labor with pay. Because woman have been stereotyped for many years on what they are entitled to do for their family, men get to sleep peacefully at night with no care about family responsibilities.
When Helen talks about the pandemic and the affect it has on dual incomes. She missed the fact that most woman take care their family on their own and have little assistance. Most woman don’t have the capabilities or the luxury of having a second income from a spouse, or father figure. They have to learn to adapt to whatever happens in the world. Only the strong survive and woman for many years have been caring for their families on their own.
The pandemic and what is has caused should not be based on men or woman. We should all be of 1 and treated equally. Gender rules play a huge factor in this article. We can continue to make differences in men and woman because that’s what we have been doing for years but does it make right. Woman takes the hit from the pandemic the hardest because they are depended on more than men.
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1.) This article talked about all the struggles women are enduring through-out the pandemic. Helen Lewis, the author of this piece, says that one of the biggest issues is that since schools have been closed one parent must stay home to “look after” the children. Most of the time is is the woman not only because this is the role she is expected to play but also the mans role is to work. Men also usually make more money than women anyways so are able to keep their jobs, while their wives are at home cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the kids. This is what she calls, “unpaid labor.” Some women who do not have a husband to help with the children or have decided to work during the pandemic have a “second shift.” Because of the pandemics ongoing “stay-at-home” rule has kept women in this role and have been given more stress and less leisure time. Until women can go back to work they will continue to be put into these roles that change their whole daily routines and schedule.
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Lewis talks about how women are usually the ones the pick up the burden of childcare during situations like this. A lot of the time, the mother is either making less money, or their job is part time more often than men, making them the logical choice to put their career on the backburner in times of crisis. This is called the “second shift” as much of the time, the woman ends up spending more time doing housework and childcare than the man, and has less leisure time.
While focusing on heterosexual couples, the article also mentions single parents. The majority of single parents are mothers, and when a situation like this occurs where the parent needs to focus on childcare, it can be a disaster. The parent needs to either quit their job, or change jobs to find something that can work with their childcare schedule. This makes them put their career path on hold, reduces or eliminates their income, and makes life much harder as a whole.
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The economic and cultural reasons why this unpaid extra labor falls predominately to women are socio-economic areas such as gender inequality and cultural practices. This creates a stereotype for women that depicts their responsibility to belong in the household, taking care of children during pandemics and in other circumstances.
This shines a light on an issue we thought had been resolved back when women gained equal rights, but we are far from the truth.
During the pandemic, mothers were having to take on this “Second shift” referring to staying at home to care for their children and also having to juggle a full-time job in the workforce.
Fauci’s statement “a pandemic magnifies all existing inequalities.” is very much true; the disparities he is referring to are health disparities among African Americans. He explains how
healthcare access is the cause of their suffering disproportionately during the pandemic because when they are infected their past underline medical conditions play a major role.
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Gender roles are always a sensitive topic, however with the pandemic it placed certain burdens depending on which side you were on. Women all around have always struggled with being per say the underdogs, throughout a woman’s life she endure more hardships than males and not on a racial scale either. Woman during the pandemic were not equipped with the resources to come out as strong as they may have hoped or perceived. Women are the sole caretakers of children when single or married. Between school, preparations for meals, shopping, cleaning, and being a full time nurturer to her household causes the heaviest burden. The lack of time available and the rate of pay doesn’t equate to what’s expected in the society today. They struggled with the financial aspects as the pandemic closed the doors of our home and trapped us. Men usually continued work and if not the time it took to get another job wasn’t that long (in my experience). Women were barricaded with the physical changes to the home, financial upsets because of it, and a mental that broke down. Society made it seem as if women were solely supposed to handle things when it would have been either with a partner with an understanding.
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The article, “The Coronavirus Is A Disaster For Feminism” by Helen Lewis speaks about an interesting topic that first surprised me when I read the title. At the beginning of the article, I found it fascinating how the author mentioned two historical men and pointed out how neither had the responsibility of raising a child. Yet, her most important information was that these men did not have family responsibilities during horrendous plague outbreaks. I thought it was brilliant how the author made the connection between the plague and the deadly coronavirus. The author’s argument is that women have been getting affected by the virus outbreak in a negative way. In other words, women have been staying home to take care of children while the husband goes to work. Unfortunately, when the coronavirus began to spread, schools were forced to have the students stay home and continue with online learning. This forced the conversation between parents on who would stay home to look after the child, in most cases it was the mother. The author points out that this is a major setback for women who fight for equality. I believe that an easy solution would be to hire someone to take care of the child while both parents are working. This way both parents are treated equally and in the case when a babysitter is unavailable, both parents can take turns on who stays home for the day. In addition, I was very surprised to read about how women around the world have been affected by pandemics. It is very unfortunate that some women do not have the support of a partner and that they will suffer because of it. On a positive note, the author mentions how this pandemic will allow researchers to document inequality towards women, so it can be prevented from happening again.
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I really related to the article “Bearing the Burden: Helen Lewis on how Pandemics affect women.” I 100% agree with the part where it talks about how women are more likely to do the unpaid “looking after”. Right now, my sister does not have a real job, she does side jobs and gets money, so with that being said she has to watch her kid while her husband plays video games. Along with watching her kid, she has to clean, cook and tend to others’ needs. I feel it is expected for any woman to take care of the kids. Especially during the pandemic. My sister was just about to quit her job because she needed to start taking care of and watching my niece. She, unfortunately, got fired that week but she was planning on leaving anyways.
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Women in pandemics are put at a disadvantage in pandemics. When kids were out of school many people believed that women should be the ones that stay home with the kids. Lewis talks about how women usually make less than men putting them and their jobs at a lower priority than the. Lewis also mentions how many households are dual income households where the men and women are both bringing money into the home. Single parents aren’t as lucky though. They have to figure out who is going to watch their children while they work because they have to keep making money so that they can support their family.
The pandemic has also brought more awareness to different sicknesses. Lewis talks about how during other pandemics women were dying in childbirth very commonly. She says that women face pandemics in a worse way than men because of the way women are stereotyped in the world.
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1) During the pandemic women were more expected to ¨take care¨ of the children more than the men.With kids not able to go to school this caused a lot of families to lose their jobs because they needed to stay home with their kids. Traditionally the females are supposed to be the caregivers during these times ordinary and hard circumstances. The economic reasoning is because men are getting paid more and carrying the most jobs compared to the women in the workforce. Taking care of the kids is called second shift because the woken are normalized to carry the role of housekeeping, while the kids are at school.The gender roles as a women now have to stay at home, tend to the house,help the kids with online school work, go get the groceries… while the husband is working giving the female more tasks to do while she is home, giving females more work load while the males are out getting paid and the women are doing just as mu7ch, if not more and getting paid nothing. This leaves females at much more of a disadvantage.
2)Lewis references the secondary consequences that consist of no change between imbalances between male and female roles due to the pandemic. Lewis then goes to talk about the Zika virus that was in Africa to show that Covid is not the first virus outbreak and that the Zika outbreak affected a lot of countries. This including domestic violence sense families were spending more time together as they are in quarantine, this explains that everyone knows the pandemic is stressful and concerning and these viruses have affected a lot.This strengthens her evidence explaining facts about viruses outside of America, showing that Lewis acknowledges also affects people other than herself as well.
3)The argument Lewis fails to reflect on is that mono income and homoseual relationships as well as the other reasonings. Mono income families only have one family member that gets money for the family and this can be very stressful and also lead working family members to work harder to get the money they need to provide for the family, not including the parent who tends to the home and kids. In a homosexual relationship both partners are the same sex and the family may not have any children. Lewis’s argument could be invalid according to a homosexual relationship, considering they are the same sex. Regardless who is working at home or put working for money, they are considered equal because they are the same sex.This could be a misconception of what Lewis is explaining.
4)Fauci explains a lot about the education of children, who are not stuck at their homes,single income families, disabled, and even the health of African Americans. Moving from interactive learning in the classroom to a screen, is a huge difference. This also makes it a lot harder for the child to learn and understand. School systems had no time to plan and form a more effective way for kids to learn better, things got a lot more out of control than expected. During these tough times, children learned hardly anything at home.
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The standard that women are the caretakers has been around for a long time. Men usually do the dirty work outside, while the women stay inside and clean or cook. Women also make less money than men, so when something like a pandemic happens, someone has to step down and take care of things at home. Families with children under a certain age have to stay home and take care of the children, and some even might have to take the role of the teacher because their kids can’t go to school. This is sometimes called the “second shift” because tasks at home can be like unpaid jobs, especially in pandemics. When parents take the role of the teacher, they sometimes have to learn along with the kids because they haven’t had to look at things like that since they were in school. Women have been doing these roles for years, and continue to through a pandemic.
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Reading Helen Lewis´s ¨The Coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism,¨ brought a lot of different things to my attention. There are many stereotypes that lead to women doing all of the family work and not getting any credit for it. It’s like being stuck back in the 1900s and earlier when the women would stay home and take care of the children, because they could not work, while the fathers worked to keep food on the table. The coronavirus brought to Helen´s attention that it was a lot like different movements in the past. That mainly made women do all of the extra work around the house and men being okay with it, and women would get underpaid or not paid at all because of the few job opportunities they had, unlike men.
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This was a really interesting blog to me. To answer the first question she was saying that children needed to be taken care of more during the pandemic. Due to social norms, women are expected to look after the children. secondary consequences of pandemics were also women being overlooked and not getting what they deserve. The pandemic brought light onto the issue and it’s a good thing it did.
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I really enjoyed reading the ” The coronavirus is a disaster for Feminism” article. In this artic, the main point is that during the pandemic it is harder on women because they are expected to take care of the kids at home because couples that take a hard hit are expected to make a decision on who will stay home with the kids because there where no more of childcare people and school is closed and so this is why they have to stay home and this usually ends up being women. There was a study done that men are more likely to recover from the pandemic faster them women are. 40% of women in a heterosexual relationship work a part-time job and 13 percent of men even with the mass entry of women work ore in the 20th century they still work second shifts and take care of the housework and are expected to do the grocery shopping to feed the family and living like the 1950s. This needs to change for women in the future pandemic and we can learn a lot from this coronavirus pandemic.
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I read the article The coronavirus is a disaster for feminism. This was a very eye-opening article. Helen Lewis the writer talks about how during the covid pandemic women were thought of as the caretakers of their children in the relations. But this didnt just happen during covid this was happening during both the Ebola and Zika viruses. Women are very underpaid and pick up jobs/shifts that a man wouldn’t have to do for his family because he’s paid very generously compared to a woman. Society assumes that women are natural-born caretakers but this is just them being a mother to their child/children. I think that this is very sexist and unfair because why do women have to work tireless days at work and come home to take care of their children and all of their needs alone without help, make dinner, take care of animals, and clean up after everyone but a man just has to work and does have to do anything. This makes no sense because men have the mindset that there better but their not becasue a woman/mom are doing their job time ten.
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When the coronavirus pandemic broke out, many schools, daycares, and babysitters were all shut down for in-home isolation this leaves parents having nowhere to send their kids while they go to work, one parent deciding to quit their job and stay home with their kids. This was most likely the mom that stayed home with the kids. The extra labor these women gave was called a “second shift” because they looked after pandemic patients, children isolated from school, and other self-isolated people, this is unpaid caregiving labor. There are couples that have made decisions on how to divide up the household word and paid work such as Wenham and her husband, who alternated their hours between 2-hour shifts of child care and paid work.
The world tried to start a distraction from the real problem in the world, which is arguing that gender is an issue, and gender and sex differences will be noticed and recorded. They want to change the view on women doing more household labor than men to save the lives of many women and girls in future outbreaks like this one.
This article does not talk about parents of the same sex going through these issues during the pandemic. It doesn’t even mention them, the main focus is on parents of the opposite sex, and it barely even talks about single parents. The article mentions them a little bit but not as much as they do parents of the opposite sex. Same-sex marriage parents will most likely face the same issues opposite-sex marriage parents would face because there are still two of them to help with the children and household labor. Single parents do not have that extra companion to rely on when splitting time between household labor and paid work, they figure it out all on their own with no school, daycare, babysitter, etc.
The pandemic had brought out the real weaknesses in our society today, the way the gay community reacted with positivity to the outcome of the pandemic had given people a different view and changed the “stigma” on the gay community as a whole.
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After reading “The Coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism” I was very intrigued by Helen Lewis’s perspective. Helen mentions that it was proven that men’s paychecks return to normal after a pandemic faster than a woman’s paychecks. Helen saw studies that showed how childhood vaccinations were declining and how women would now have to miss work to stay home and help with their sick children, therefore, making them miss out on money they could be making to help support their children. Also, Helen references 1950s life and compares it to covid times where men would be the “breadwinners” and women would stay home and take care of the children, clean, cook, and do other household activities. The woman would not be able to work due to her having to stay home.
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Lewis points out that the effects of COVID-19 are more disastrous than we can imagine. I assume this will continue to reveal itself as we slowly come out of this pandemic that extended into two—going on three years now. She states that women have experienced the pandemic differently than men. Women have faced dead ends when it comes to childcare. Where women were the caretakers who stayed home, the economy does not currently allow for such luxuries for many single parent households, including two parent homes where both parents have to hold two jobs each to maintain financial stability. Women are facing this backwards experience, and “flash” of the 1950s. Even though the article doesn’t address the overturn of Roe v. Wade since it was published before the overturn—but imagine what Lewis would have to say to that catastrophe. In addition to Lewis’ points about our declining economy that puts women at risk for financial instability, disempowerment, and fighting to keep a room over her, and her family’s heads—she must now seek ways to access reproductive healthcare, and if that care is not afforded to her because she lives in a red state, her health is a risk, and yes—this jeopardizes feminism because we need women for there to be such concept to thrive, and exist. Not to mention—the recent debacle from Tampax’s Twitter account that stated: You’re in their DMs, but we are inside them” tweet that horrified women across the globe, that went viral in 24 hours, from the violation Tampax committed in a thoughtless move, that could have been career suicide for them. One woman tweeted back: this is misogynistic, you’re supposed to represent women, not demoralize us.” Another woman tweeted that Tampax was anthropomorphizing a tampon like “it was engaged in in some toxic masculine conquest bravado.” We need the proper respect, and healthcare, and healthcare products that won’t sexualize our reproductive functions. We need better pay (including both for working men, and women). We deserve, and need our reproductive rights protected, not exposed, and striped from us like we are incapable of making choices for our own bodies. Feminism is in danger because our officials who should be protecting us have taken our rights away, unless a woman is in a state like California where our governor would not allow the female California resident to live unprotected where her reproductive rights are concerned.
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I throughly enjoyed reading the following article on how pandemics, specifically the COVID-19 Pandemic, affect women. The article talked about how we need to start taking a “gender-neutral” approach to pandemics, but after just living through one that really did not happen. Although COVID was a huge public health crisis, it was also an economic one. Children who were once enrolled in paid childcare, whether it was at school, daycare, or with a babysitter it now became unpaid childcare that fell on the parents to take care of. One parent had to take the hit for the childcare, as you can’t just leave your children at home, especially when they are doing online school and will need assistance. Majority of the time women took the hit. Although this could be rooted in gender roles, a lot of this was because of the difference in income between husband and wife. Majority of time women make less than their male spouse, therefore they chose to stay home and let their husband work as he can provide more. Along with this, with the Ebola outbreak vaccination rates declined, leading to children becoming sick and their mothers would have to take time off work to care for them. Majority of the reason women took the hit during the pandemic, as well as ones in the past is solely due to income differences. It makes more sense for the husband to continue working if he makes more. The problem is when women have to stay home due to “gender-roles” as they are automatically seen as a caretaker. This is where a change needs to come in if it is due to gender roles rather than an income level difference.
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Reading this article really stuck out to me because it opened my eyes to the hardships that women deal with during pandemics. Society teaches us that women should be the main caregivers to their children. While living in a pandemic world, it is hard to find someone to watch your children while you are working due to social distancing. With this being said, many women were required to somehow figure out a plan with their husbands so they could both work and take care of children, or required to lose their income and become a stay at home caretaker. This not only affected the women because they were making no money, but it also caused them to stay at home full time and lose any form of their social life at work during a pandemic. This relates to all pandemics, but especially COVID. Thinking back to other pandemics, women were severely affected by Ebola. This caused danger to them due to higher pregnancies at lower ages, and a higher mortality rate during birth due to the healthcare workers being focused on the pandemic instead. Pandemics obviously affect everyone, but this article shows the difficult effects it had on women specifically.
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The coronavirus pandemic has caused not only a health risk but an economic risk as well. The closures of schools, daycares, babysitting, etc. have caused childcare to be extremely difficult to access and have put many people out of jobs. Before covid-19, both parents could work because someone was watching their children. Since there was no one to watch the kids because of these closures these parents had to decide who would stay home and who would work. This decreased the amount of income coming into the home, but it also raised a gender inequality concern. Many mothers in these families would stay home due to the norm of women being the caretaker and because their husbands made more money than them. In heterosexual couples, women are usually paid less which means that their jobs are less of a priority when disruptions occur.
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Throughout the article, Lewis argues that women are more likely to take care of the children in ordinary and unordinary circumstances. In history, women filled the roll of house wife and wouldn’t have a paying job, their only job would be to tend to their kids and make sure the house stays clean and what not. Under capitalism women are viewed as the means of production for the new workforce and often nothing more than that. This pandemic will leave secondhand consequences to long lasting gender norms because of how you still have a woman as the primary caregiver, this will only make it more of a social norm for the woman to be in the house still. She believes that this pandemic has caused the gender norms to almost regress back into what it used to be in history. She also failed to recognize homosexual relationships. When both of the parents are of the same gender/gender identity, the gender norms of the relationship switch.
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I agree with Helen Lewis’s point that traditional gender roles and responsibilities have been upended during the pandemic. For example, many parents who typically worked outside of the home had to start working from home, so the tasks that are traditionally considered the domain of mothers (like homeschooling, grocery shopping, and housework) had to be shared more equitably. At the same time, however, I disagree with the assertion that the change has been positive across the board, because many women have had to shoulder a much greater burden during the pandemic. Although some fathers have taken on a larger share of household duties, it has been much harder for women to take time off of work to care for sick relatives, be available to children with learning difficulties, or make decisions related to the safety and wellbeing of the family. Overall, the pandemic has highlighted the inequality of gendered roles, but I believe that change must come from society, not just individuals, if true equality is to be achieved.
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Dealing with the pandemic is definitely a struggle that persists. I can only agree with everything in Helen Lewis’s article “The Coronavirus Is a Disaster to Feminism”. During the pandemic I myself was forced to resign from my job as a paralegal because they didn’t allow us to work from home and I had 3 elementary school children. As exasperated as I was at the fact that this was supposed to be my career to prepare me for retirement within this company my fiancé job had a more promising salary which could cover our bills and leave us financially stable. Even before I resigned the duties of a sick child fell in my lap, with no questions or discussion of who would take off to go to doctors’ appointments. For most mothers this is a common task that only increased due to the pandemic because it is what men have decided is a womanly task. I myself have questioned our mothers of time wondering who made this stupid rule book that have left our women responsible for all of the family care needs. Why is it so abnormal for men to take on these tasks? So many questions that reach beyond the Pandemic and men finding their so-called leadership skills that their forefathers possessed. Majority of families couldn’t afford to lose one income because both parties played a major part in their stability. But once again the woman was forced to quit their job and now upon return are working jobs that made half of what they made Pre-Pandemic.
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I completely agree with Helen Lewis’s argument that women take the brunt of childcare and overall house-care, even when they work a full-time job, while all fathers have to do is work a full-time job to fulfill his duties. In my own experience during the pandemic, while I stayed at home and did online classes just like my older brother, I saw myself the one cooking breakfast, and making sure the house was clean for my parents. In contrast, my brother was only doing his online classes. Women taking the brunt of childcare starts early on, and it’s our responsibility to make sure future generations of children are working and getting paid equally.
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Throughout the pandemic multiple women are able to speak of their experience. A house of husband and wife both view the situation differently. While the woman has to be the care giver, the worrier, the one making sure the kids are learning and also the one that are breadwinners. As someone who watched the woman be everything that is stated above, not much was changed. Though, I have heard many complaints. As a woman, they are relatable. Being raised to be the caregiver of the household, I could imagine the responsibilities that falls on the woman during a time of isolation. Seeing my sister in law does the cooking, teaches my nephew, teach him how to read. I would have dreaded it. The difference between the genders roles were definitely there, but to write that I experienced would be lie. I was hospitalized, under care for most of it.
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During the pandemic I noticed a lot of difference in gender roles. Many of my female friends who were working quit to stay home with their children. Some did so because they no longer had childcare available. Others had jobs that could often expose themselves to covid and they didn’t want to bring it home to their families. I did not have a single male friend quit his job due to childcare or the safety of his family. This makes me agree with Helen Lewis’s argument that women had to suffer more during the pandemic than males did.
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The shut down due to the coronavirus had a major effect on everyone. Families had to make tough choices as the best way to handle their situations. But they were choices. I do not know any men that quit their job to take care of their kids, but I also do not know any women that were forced to do so either. Places shut down and people were not allowed to go to work. In my group of friends, whoever could work, did so. I personally worked 6 days a week for 13 hours a day to keep the power on for my community. I slept in a separate section of my house the few hours I was home. I performed most of the grocery shopping for my family after work. Many men I knew were sequestered and separated from their families. Would it be worse to stay home, take care of the kids, and be with your family or be forced to be away from them? I am not taking anything away from the women that did what they had to do and performed the duties required of them, I am just saying that it was tough on all of us.
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I really enjoyed reading this. I agree that gender roles have always played a role in our lives but the pandemic has definitely moved women back again. Sadly when it comes down to who working benefits the most financially it is 9 out of 10 times the male of the family because we live in a world where men make more than women. I know when the pandemic happened, that was not the case for my family, at least while things were shutdown. I work in healthcare and my husband is an electrician. When things shutdown I stayed working to provide income still while he was laid off. However now that the pandemic is over my husband is back to work and makes more than I do. Therefore I am the one taking care of the home and taking sick days for sick kids.
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As an essential healthcare worker during the pandemic has put me in a unique situation. It has brought to the fore front of my mind just how many women are working the hospital. More precisely how many women have direct access to patients. It is overwhelmingly female. So, while I agree that more research should be conducted to help facilitate the next global pandemic, I cannot accept her claim that it is mainly women being displaced.
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The coronavirus caused many issues around the world. One of those issues was disrupting the feminist movement. This virus caused many parents to choose who stayed home and who got to work. Most of the time it was the mother who stayed home due to the fact that they make less money. I experienced this situation with my own family during the pandemic. Due to the fact that my mother makes less money than my father and is also a teacher, she had to stay home and work while also caring for me and my siblings. We all agreed that it wasn’t fair but at the time, it made the most sense. I agree with Lewis’s article because it does tend to be the women who stay home while the men go out and make the money. I thought we moved past this 20 years ago but I guess the pandemic brought us back in time.
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As I was reading the article “The Coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism” my mind started traveling in the past remembering all the stress this virus had brought. It was such a challenging time for our family of four. My husband was working in a restaurant as a chef, and I was doing deliveries while the kids were at school. As the pandemic started and the government issued all the schools to close not knowing a reopening date. I had to stop working to take care of the kids while they had to do school remotely. The restaurant where my husband worked closed, so while we figured out how to subtend our family, he started this delivery job with Instacart. It was a hard time in our lives. We were so afraid because he was exposed to the virus, but we had no choice. Our kids need it a rough on their heads and food on the table. I can relate to the article on feminism suffering to lost jobs to care of their families.
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In the article “The Coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism” , Lewis argues that the pandemic has affected many women due to them having to be at home caring for their child due to schools and daycares being closed. We were forced to leave our jobs to go home and care for our children because it’s normally a women job to care for the kids. Even if they were offered to work from home it still would be tough for us because the children is home all day and kids need to be tended to. During the coronavirus I was pregnant with my first born and the way that it affected my family was when it came to appointments I was the only one allowed to go in nobody else was able to come in with me so it made me feel like I was doing the process alone. Also I was working in a office which eventually turned into work from home because I didn’t want to be exposed by the virus, and with me being pregnant it made me a little stressed out because I was home all day not really moving and it would make me very sleepy and from sitting down all day. I would have very swollen feet from sitting down. it took a toll on me mentally so by the time I was 7 months I decided to quit my job and at that point my husband was taking care of the house hold by himself while I was home. I do agree with Lewis’s argument because they have normalized mothers sacrificing their jobs to care for the children at home.
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Helen Lewis The coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism was a very interesting article. while I read the article, I can agree with her on how the pandemic affected feminism. Many women struggle in their household. Even if it was a two-parent household. According to Helen the pandemic had an extreme hold on mothers. No one to watch their children or help around the house. Everything went back to the early 50’s. Dad’s returning home to a hot plate. Children cleaned to perfection or in bed. This would seem nice, but it’s not ideal. during the pandemic, dads would take on the role of keeping his job while the mother is forced to handle all the household.
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My curiosity was piqued by Helen Lewis’s viewpoint after reading “The Coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism.” Helen says it’s been demonstrated that following a pandemic, men’s salaries recover more quickly than those of women. Helen came across studies indicating a decrease in childhood vaccination rates and the subsequent need for working women to take time off work to care for ailing children. This results in the women losing out on earning income that could be utilized to support their families. I do agree with Helen’s argument. I feel like equal pay for everyone is fair.
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I believe that a woman is not appreciated enough for their role as mothers, wives, breadwinners, housekeepers, cooks, etc. To me even before the pandemic, it has been hard on women. There is no time for themselves. A woman is expected to be a full-time mother, work, tend to the household needs, run errands, transport to activities and sports, cook, help with homework and so much more. If we were to get sick there is no one to take our place. Kids still need to be tended to, household things don’t stop, errands still have to be done, and meals cooked. Yes, I know some fathers take on that role also and sometimes they are single parents too. It is so common to be just a one-parent household nowadays. It really puts a lot of burden on that parent. Women suffer more from mental illness and stress than men and it takes a toll on their well-being also. The cost of living and raising children is so high and demanding in today’s time. It does put a financial strain on women cause they are usually the person taking care of the finances. So if they are out of work due to a pandemic and sickness for themselves or for their children and in some cases not able to go to work cause of school being out for the pandemic and daycares being closed. Women struggle with the choices to go to work and make the finances to take care of the home and children or go to work and not have anywhere for the children to go while at work for supervision or being schooled through virtual learning at home. Then the cost increase of feeding the children home all day instead of eating at school 2 meals a day.
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