During this pandemic, 2.5 million women have left the workforce (compared to 1.8 million men). Women, who before the pandemic made up more than half the workforce, are now at their lowest workforce participation level since 1988. Women of color have been especially affected. In January of 2021, for instance, the overall unemployment rate for women was 6.3% (double the pre-pandemic rate), but the rate for Asian women was 7.9%, for Black women 8.5%, and for Latina women 8.8%. White women’s unemployment rate was 5.1%.

     This exodus of women from the workplace was propelled in part by the gendered division of labor. We are all familiar with this division, even if we do not know it by that name. It describes the phenomenon whereby the bulk of unpaid domestic work is done by women whether or not they also do paid work outside the home. Unpaid domestic work includes housework, such as cleaning, cooking, shopping, and doing laundry, and caring work, such as feeding, dressing, bathing and transporting children, helping with homework, and assisting elderly parents. Recent data show that, in the U.S., women who are married to, or cohabitating with, a man do about two-thirds of all routine household tasks. In OECD countries, fathers, on average, spend less than half the time caring for children than their employed female partners do. According to a 2018 Oxfam report, women around the world do between two and 10 times as much unpaid domestic work as men. The global value of this work is estimated to be $10 trillion per year.

     In addition to performing most of the domestic labor, women typically also carry what is called the “mental load”— the invisible work involved in managing a household and a family. This work includes such tasks as planning meals, making doctor’s appointments, signing up for parent-teacher conferences, organizing birthday parties, registering for summer camp, finding babysitters, and so on. Moreover, mothers in heterosexual partnerships are typically the “default parent.” This means that they are the ones ultimately responsible for child care. This responsibility includes bearing the mental load when it comes to parenting but also taking time off from work when children are sick, foregoing promotions, or  withdrawing from the workforce altogether when children are young.

     It appears then that traditional ideas about men’s and women’s roles in the family have persisted, despite men’s increased involvement in domestic labor in developed countries over the past 60 years and despite the prevalence of a “marriage between equals discourse” identified by family researchers. An illustration of this persistence is the favorable reaction to Jen Psaki’s announcement that she will soon step down

from her position as President Biden’s press secretary in order to spend more time with her children. One wonders how people would have regarded a similar announcement coming from Sean Spicer.

     The pandemic has laid bare the resilience of this traditional perspective, especially the idea of the mother as the default parent. When schools and child care facilities shuttered, it was primarily mothers who left their jobs to care for children and shepherd them through online school, thus contributing to the especially high rate of unemployment among women. This abrupt shift in employment caused an abrupt shift in perspective for many Americans. Care work, they realized, is a substantial and vital part of human life. Hence it is unrealistic to ask individual women (or men) to figure out how to provide it on their own, especially under the constraints of outdated ideologies that make providing it costly and difficult. A collective approach, it seems clear now, is better for everyone. In the words of the recently formed Care Economy Business Council, “Our economy cannot reach its full potential without women and women cannot reach their full potential without a reimagining of care.”

     What would such a reimagining look like? Several ideas have been proposed. One is to modify workplace policies and culture. Many jobs are designed as though workers lack caring responsibilities. The notion of the “worker,” presumably genderneutral, is actually the notion of the male breadwinner. Another is federally funded family and medical leave available to both male and female workers. This would enable those who want to have children but also need or want to do paid work to do so without bearing undue emotional, social or financial costs. Yet another proposal is increased wages for caregiving workers. This would attract highly qualified individuals and reflect the social value of their work.

     Perhaps most important is the Biden administration’s proposal to spend $200 billion to make preschool free for 3- and 4 -year-olds, as kindergarten currently is, and to ensure that middle-income families pay no more than 7% of their income on child care and that low-income families pay nothing.

     There is increasing support for improving our caregiving infrastructure. We are at a tipping point. Let’s hope we can keep the momentum going for the sake of all who rely on care from others at some point in their lives, which is to say, for the sake of everyone.