With homeschooling on the rise, will the responsibility largely fall on women?

[Manpreet Singh]

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With women at their heart, the COVID‐19 pandemic harms health, social and economic prosperity worldwide. The women lead the health response first and foremost: women represent roughly 70 percent of all health care personnel and expose them to a higher risk of infection. Women also bear a lot of the load at home, given the closures of schools and children’s facilities and long-standing gender inequities in the working environment. Women also suffer high risks for work and income loss and are exposed in times of crisis and quarantine to greater dangers of violence, exploitation, abuse, and harassment.
Many unpaid working hours of women are spent on childcare. Women spend a large time every day on childcare activities in all OECD nations on average, more than doubling the number of days spent on males in childcare (15 minutes) (OECD Time Use Database).
However, many women care for relatives of adults, particularly parents, even while at work. COVID‐19 is to increase the unpaid burden on women’s jobs. For example, by closing schools and childcare facilities on a general scale, not only will parents spend more of their time in children’s care or child care, but also many will be forced to oversee or lead home school. Likewise, increased housework, including cooking and cleaning, will likely lead to increases in the time that is spent in the home because of containment. Many parents, particularly those who have to continue working, will find it impossible to fulfill those commitments.
As virtual education in some locations increases, women are forced to choose to care for their children or to give priority to their own careers. The threat posed by women’s engagement in the workforce and their recovery from job losses in the crisis was enormous and often neglected. Almost half of the school-aged parents claimed that the school was totally online, and only 20% said they will be in school full time this year. Overall it s a worrying trend and we need to look closer into it for some solutions.

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