3 Jul 2020
In the first of a three-part series looking at how COVID-19 has impacted on women working in the profession, editor of Veterinary Woman Liz Barton discusses male and female inequalities that are emerging, including the impact on work and finances…
Liz Barton
Job Title
Image © freshidea / Adobe Stock
This is a series of articles I didn’t want to write. However, I have felt compelled to as wave after wave of research, statistics and discussion have made me realise we need to do better for women in this pandemic.
Gender inequalities are emerging that include the impact on work and finances. Secondly, and of huge importance, is the impact on our mental health.
Finally, the shift towards working from home and flexible working has highlighted both challenges and opportunities moving forwards. I’ll cover each of these themes in this series of articles.
Growing evidence exists that women’s careers are suffering as they shoulder more of the caring responsibilities thrust on them during lockdown. Institute of Fiscal Studies and University College London research found mums were only able to do one hour of uninterrupted work for every three hours done by dads1.
The closure of schools and childcare providers has compounded pre-existing disparities between how childcare is shared within families2. This has resulted in huge strain on vets with caring responsibilities. Having childcare provision suddenly withdrawn has resulted in inability to work – especially for single-parent families.
Discussions within the Vet Mums Facebook group have shown the considerable variation in how these challenges have been met. Some vets have requested key worker status for childcare, but the agreement for this on the part of schools and nurseries has been variable. This increases the likelihood – and, indeed, desire in many cases – of furloughing.
While furlough may provide short-term relief, negative impacts of reduced income, and absence of self-esteem and social benefits of work, will build over time. Where furlough has not been initiated by employers, women have reported having to take holiday or unpaid leave.
Fawcett Society chief executive Sam Smethers said the wider implications of the lockdown gender divide are clear. She said: “This shows the default assumptions about who does the caring for children fundamentally haven’t shifted. It defaults to women. There’s still an expectation that women will make their jobs fit around the caring, whereas a man’s job will come first.”
She warned of the emergence of a two-tier workforce, with women at the bottom3,4.
Women are not only finding it harder to juggle work while they take on the bulk of additional responsibility at home – they are also more likely to lose their jobs.
Women in the UK are 4% more likely to have been made redundant. This gender job loss gap was shown to exist even after controlling for education, occupation and regional location within each country. Women have also experienced a 26% wage drop compared to 18% for men; remember, that’s superimposed on an existing wage gap5.
Knapp Social Science Center director Olga Shurchkov said: “We have seen evidence from mothers that they are being penalised and not being supported to work from home because they have children. We’ve also seen mothers having to take unpaid leave or being dismissed1.”
Women’s academic and research output has also been adversely affected compared to men. One article highlighted that women’s publishing rate has fallen relative to men during the pandemic6. Across disciplines – from economics, medicine, philosophy and science – women’s output and productivity has seen a disproportionate decline.
Unless educational establishments take steps to mitigate gender disparity during the pandemic, potential exists for mid to long-term negative consequences for gender diversity in academia.
I had to laugh to avoid sheer rage reading an article about how career women have rediscovered the simple joys of housework, knitting and cooking during lockdown. How we’d been so focused on work and a career that we’d forgotten the simple pleasures of a stay-at-home lifestyle.
I’m not denying that purpose and enjoyment exists in cleaning, cooking and childcare, but for most of us they are certainly not a higher calling that offers more satisfaction and enjoyment than career and work.
One of the most powerful motivators at work is a feeling of belonging7. Working from home can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation from work colleagues, and a sense of belonging may ebb. As a locum who has lost all regular work with a team where I felt welcome and valued, I am feeling this more keenly as the pandemic persists.
In addition to stifling career progression, women losing out financially during Covid will have future pension penalties.
If we want to be secure and self-sufficient financially in our twilight years, we have to act now to mitigate the negative impact on our income and pension contributions.
So, how do we mitigate these negative impacts? Firstly, we must acknowledge a widening of the gender gap has occurred across multiple areas, and work harder to close it. As with all challenges, opportunity can be found lurking at the periphery. Moving forwards embracing positive changes will take conversation and coordinated effort, but we have the chance to foster greater equality around traditional gender roles.
While women are still shouldering the majority of the burden, men have proportionately increased their role sharing by 50%; a greater percentage change than for women. Indeed, many heart-warming stories exist of women and men equally juggling non-work roles to facilitate each other’s careers.
Additionally, working from home is likely to become more socially acceptable. This could foster more gender parity in role sharing in the long term for both childcare and household responsibilities.
Modern life requires a rewiring of societal attitudes to traditional gender-biased roles. Both sexes are now more often working than not, and the greater proportion of unpaid labour carried out by women leads to reduced time and opportunity to progress in their careers.
However, culture takes at least a generation to change – and where bias (conscious or unconscious) exists, it can take considerably longer.
For the short term, facilitating careers within a couple can be aided by open and honest discussion of goals, and division of labour accordingly. This dynamic “couples’ contract” will change over time and should be regularly revisited. Several templates exist online to provide some structure to such discussion8.
Awareness is the first step to addressing problems, so thank you for reading! Those interested in a more in-depth discussion of the issues in this article can read the full version at Veterinary Woman.
We want to hear your experiences and ideas on how we can better facilitate women in the workplace through and beyond Covid-19. To be representative we need diverse representation and would like to invite women from across the industry to take part.
Follow our Facebook page for upcoming polls to feed into this work, and to share your story or contribute, email [email protected]
