Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.

Will the Lockdown Finally Get Men to Do Their Fair Share at Home?

If you’re a working mom, you probably don’t need a bunch of statistics and headlines to convince you the long weeks at home under lockdown were rough on women, but if you do, there are plenty.

Thanks to the extra burden of supervising their kids’ education and keeping the house running in the midst of a pandemic, the number of publications by female academics cratered during lockdown, Fast Company recently reported. A New York Times article announced “Nearly Half of Men Say They Do Most of the Home Schooling. 3 Percent of Women Agree.” And new research shows more women than men have left work as a result of the crisis, those that are still working are putting in fewer paid hours but are actually doing a bigger share around the house.

All of which paints a pretty grim picture of how working women fared during the long weeks of lockdown when their professional stress skyrocketed at the same time their home responsibilities multiplied, and their partners often didn’t step up to help as much as they could have.

But while the short-term effect on equality is clearly negative, the long-term changes wrought by the experience may be more positive.

Hope on the horizon for overwhelmed working moms