“Everything that’s happened has been predicted, right?” she told me. “As a collective academic group, we knew there would be an outbreak that came out of China, that shows you how globalization spreads disease, that’s going to paralyze financial systems, and there was no pot of money ready to go, no governance plan … We knew all this, and they didn’t listen. So why would they listen to something about women?” 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Clare Wenhan

As the coronavirus outbreak continues to overwhelm our resources, public health officials have been hoping for social distancing restrictions to reduce the overcrowding in hospitals and death rates. Harsh measures have been taken all around the world, including curfews, lock-downs, shelter in place mandates, school and restaurant closures in order to flatten the curve. As normal life continues to be suspended at least until the end of April, the public health crisis continues to affect our economy as well as family dynamics. While it is speculated that coronavirus physically affects men more severely, women might still be the silent victims of the pandemic. While some anticipate household isolation and the global repression will take couples back to the 1950’s, outcomes of past outbreaks like Ebola and Zika imply that lopsided division of house chores and childcare is not the only challenge that is awaiting women during and after this pandemic. 

While it does not compare to the challenges healthcare officials and hourly wage workers without the option to stay at home have been facing, the school closures have expanded the responsibilities of parents, especially for the ones with children under the age of eighteen. Many parents have been faced with the challenge of balancing homeschooling, child care and domestic chores while they continue to work remotely from home. According to a study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, four in ten Americans who said their life has been disrupted ‘a lot’ as a result of the coronavirus are parents of children under the age of eighteen. While it does not mean that fathers are not contributing to the family, mostly mothers have been continuing to be the full-time operators of homes. Color-coded schedules and suggested academic and leisure activities prepared by mothers have gone viral online. Sarah Joyce Willey, a chief client officer for a health services company, spoke to New York Times and said “I feel like I have five jobs, mom, teacher, C.C.O, house cleaner, chef. My kids also call me ‘principal mommy’ and ‘the lunch lady’. It is exhausting” as she explained working from home while teaching her two kids under the age of ten, while her husband, who works for the state of Rhode Island is at work. While in many opposite-sex marriages the division of labor is often not equal, stay at home mandates during the pandemic, has further emphasized this lopsided division of labor at home. There are also parents who do not have the luxury to divide domestic chores. It is again the female population that is influenced more due to the fact that 80 percent of single-parent households are headed by women. 

However, the unequal domestic chores or the added stress is only the tip of the iceberg for the problems that are yet to come due to the global health and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Past epidemics and outbreaks like Ebola, Zika, SARS, swine flu and bird flu, shed light on the anticipated long-lasting effects of Coronavirus pandemic on gender equality. 

The aftermath of the Ebola Outbreak in West Africa shows that while the distorting effects of outbreaks can last years, it might take longer for women to return to their economic status pre-outbreak. As non-essential procedures are suspended and most healthcare workers are mainly focused on patients of the outbreak, rates of childhood vaccinations decline. In West Africa, during the Ebola Crisis, this led many children contracting preventable diseases. As children needed more care, it was their mothers who had to take time off work. As caring labor falls heavily on women, it is harder for women to go back to their jobs and return to their previous income after the outbreak. Due to the uncertainty of how long the harsh measurements will continue, in many countries, it is still unclear when schools and daycares will start to work normally. Families who do not have external help to take care of their younger children will have to make sacrifices, just like during other outbreaks. While many fathers will step up, it certainly won’t be the case for most families. 

Not all lessons to be learned from past epidemics and outbreaks are concerned with economic stability. School closures might not only influence the parents but also the students. During the Ebola epidemic, school closures led to more girls dropping out of education and exacerbation of the rise of teenage pregnancy rates. Additionally, in many rich and poor communities, the rise of domestic violence rates are expected due to the fact that during the Ebola and Zika outbreaks the imposed harsh measures like lock-downs and shelter in place mandates increased the three main triggers of domestic violence: stress, alcohol consumption and financial difficulties. Women will be more hopeless during a time of quarantine against domestic violence due to the isolation from all resources. Many women will also be affected by the distortion in health systems during the pandemic. During the Ebola epidemic between the years 2013 and 2016, more women died of obstetric complications in Sierra Leone than the infectious disease itself. Compared to the immediate problems generated by an outbreak maternal mortality rates and access to contraception is expected to remain unnoticed. 

While it is hard to predict what is yet to come, past outbreaks help us paint a picture of what might be ahead. Clare Wenham, an assistant professor of global health policy at the London School of Economics, does not seem to be hopeful that coronavirus will be the first outbreak that government will take gender and sex differences into account in their policies. While support of emergency child care provisions, economic security for small business or financial stimulus paid directly to families are suggestions that would aid the outcomes of the pandemic, governments continue to act slowly and build short-term policies.  

-Beril