The last 50 years in the US have seen huge strides for women: with their role in society changing and finally reaching over 50% of the workforce by January 2020 and with higher skilled jobs: but sadly all of this changed with the pandemic. The bottom line, according to the New York Times, has been that this “created a child-care crisis, (and) mothers became the default solution“. Mothers have been forced to be the back-up plan and have had to stop working, thereby losing all the gains made for their gender, that took so long to come about and so much effort to build, but this is also “a loss of self-determination, of self-reliance, of complex selves”. Having this choice made for them is probably the most hurtful of aspects, and sums up the “the paradox of being a working woman who is a wife and mother”. The situation of having to quit a job is due to multiple factors but mostly due to so many school closures, in some cases schedules which were only part-time and also the fear that some parents had of sending their children back to school in an uncertain situation. For many women work had been a desperate option to change their circumstances but whatever short-term independence they had gained the expectation was always going to be that it should be the woman to give this up. Let’s hope that the end of the pandemic is in sight and that women can regain their rightful place in the workforce and slowly we can end this gender bias.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/17/upshot/women-workforce-employment-covid.html