One of the things that has been impressed on me is how unequally this Covid19 pandemic is impacting on women.
With headlines like COVID-19 has laid bare how much we value women’s work, and how little we pay for it and the Financial Times asking Is the coronavirus crisis taking women back to the 1950s?, and even the Commonwealth Government noting the Gendered impact of COVID-19, it seems to me that we need to start asking some questions.
One of the reasons I called this site women’s work is that every single woman works, and many work more than their fair share.
Women are taking up the slack with their unremunerated work in the home together with their paid jobs, many women are on the front lines dealing with the health crisis we face.
In my own industry it has been noted that women in academia are not publishing as much as in the pre-pandemic times. There was a good piece on this phenomenon in The Conversation by Professor Megan Frederickson: Women are getting less research done than men during this coronavirus pandemic. She noted that:
“I found that the number of male preprint authors is currently growing faster than the number of female preprint authors. In other words, on average, women are not advancing their research as much as men during the pandemic.”
I am not sure what we can do about this. But becoming conscious that there is a problem is the first step.
Women's Work 