Working for women’s work

One of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is that, metaphorically speaking, the world has moved backwards in time at least in so far as the prospects for women’s equality are concerned. The World Economic Forum (WEF) has estimated that the pandemic may have cost us as much as four decades of progress in the fight against gender discrimination, particularly in the field of labor.

Even before the pandemic, women faced an uphill battle. The pay gap between men and women in similar positions persisted, as did discriminatory hiring practices based on patriarchal prejudices against women and their assumed role in the family and society at large. Even in the Philippines, which continually places at or near the top in the Asia Pacific Region in the WEF Global Gender Report, a closer look at the Global rankings will reveal that the country has been steadily dropping from #6 in 2008 to #17 in 2021. Patriarchal and misogynistic attitudes towards women remain deeply entrenched in our society, as any woman who spends time on social media will readily tell you.

COVID-19’s arrival laid bare and exacerbated existing inequalities, and this included those that burden women in the workplace. Statistics show that, globally, the pandemic has hit women harder in terms of work, both paid and unpaid, particularly mothers. Data show that: women earned 86 percent of the median hourly earnings of a man in 2021, and that amongst people with no education beyond high school, women exited the labor force in greater numbers than similarly situated men.

Some of this can be attributed to the fact that many women are employed in sectors and occupations that require on-site work – such as those in retail, hospitality and education – and these were amongst the hardest hit by the pandemic. In the Philippines, more than six million women work in the informal economy, a sector that is mostly unregulated and with few labor protections such as paid leave. But the blame for women being pushed out of work cannot be laid solely on the nature of their employment. Bias against women, directly and indirectly, contributes as well. The director of the University of the Philippines Center for Women’s and Gender Studies has said that some employers let go of women first because of the assumption that they are not the primary breadwinners of the family anyway – they are primarily seen as caregivers in the home. And when that attitude also continues within the family itself, we see situations where even when women retain their employment, they are still expected to care for the household with little, if any, help from their male partner.

This is all the more prevalent for mothers. The OECD Risks that Matter Survey 2020 gathered data from over 20 countries that showed mothers were almost three times more likely than fathers to say that they took on most of the housework related to school or childcare facility closures, and that mothers of children under 12 were the most likely group to become unemployed during the pandemic. When societal expectations place the burden of housework and children primarily or solely on the woman, not only does this impact a woman’s ability to keep or look for a job, it can also severely harm their physical and mental health.

As COVID cases once again recede in our country and restrictions are once again loosened, it is important that public and private organizations move swiftly to improve the earning capacity of women. This cannot mean a mere return to the previous status quo, which has already been exposed to be disadvantageous to women. One of the few positive side effects of the pandemic is that it has forced many jobs to embrace remote work and more flexible schedules. Previously, the career and job prospects of a working mother would suffer every time she would need to decline assignments or opportunities because she needed to be at home taking care of her family. In occupations that have been able to support remote work and flexible schedules, this greatly reduced the number of times women and mothers would have to choose, allows them to be “on call” simultaneously at both work and the home.

But without addressing the underlying inequalities of societal expectation, such flexibility can actually be a double-edged sword. If remote work is still seen as inferior, or a compromise in favor of the worker, then the worker may actually work longer hours in a desire to compensate for this. This burden of expectation can easily become exploitation, and women and mothers will be pulled both ways… expected to both do work and take care of their families, and feeling guilty that doing these simultaneously makes them worse at both.

The changes we push for must be both structural and societal, taking aim at both inequalities of systems and the patriarchal mindsets that gave rise to them in the first place. Here are a few:

• There must be a greater drive for affordable childcare options for families, particularly for children with special needs. We cannot continue to place this burden on extended families, or presume access to kasambahays. We cannot have another generation of women being forced to choose between careers and family.

• We must lessen gender inequality at home and take aim at the idea that care of the home and children is a woman’s responsibility. Incentivizing the involvement of the father through the grant of longer and mandatory paternal leave will help encourage long-term caregiving behavior for men as they take a more active role with their newborns.

• Private companies must be made active partners at changing their hiring processes (such as structured interviews) and corporate culture, and educated as to the harm gender bias does to productivity.

• There must be a continued push to allow remote work and flexible schedules, particularly where these have already been shown as possible during the pandemic. These positions should be treated as equal and not a lesser or lazier form of work, and workers must have the right to disconnect from their jobs at reasonable hours.

The world must work to keep women at work, to keep them free and equal. Women and mothers may be seen as the light of the home… but they are first and foremost human beings. If we truly value them, we must take care that their light does not burn out.