Question

how is COVID 19 affected women's unpaid domestic work and how has womens responsibilities changed in the nursing sector like are women nurses more tired because they have to work and do domestic work? ****You must include references to at least 4 sociological works in your question (scholarly books or journal articles).  

Answer 1

Effect of COVID-19 on women's unpaid domestic work-

Before COVID-19 became a pandemic, women were already doing thrice as much unpaid domestic work as men. But as the schools and offices started to close with COVID-19, the demand for unpaid house and childcare falls even more heavily on women due to existing structure of workforce and social norms. So, stress and multitasking have taken a disproportionate toll on women's health and well- being. Women are at the forefront of this COVID-19 response as the default family caregivers. The unpaid and invisible labor of women has increased exponentially by the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic has revealed the way a family, a community and the formal economy is dependent on the invisible unpaid labour of women (1).

There is a huge gap between the contributions of women and men to unpaid care and domestic work. This gap has increased drastically in the COVID-19 pandemic, the subsequent lockdowns and the resulting increased burden of care with the disruption of health and social services and closing of schools and childcare facilities. Women unpaid burden can be even higher in households with more dependents, where demand for care tends to be greatest. Also, when people stay home in quarantine or when they are sufferring from the virus and needed to be cared within their houses, the stigma associated with health assistance demands more of women's time.

Changes in the responsibilities of women nurses due to COVID-19 pandemic-

The COVID-19 outbreak has eacerbated the gendered impacts of the crisis by increasing women's economic and social insecurity, unpaid care work (2).

Unlike previous economic crisis, this COVID-19 is adversely affecting economic activity featuring a large share of female employment. Furthermore, as women healthcare workers and nurses are on the frontline of COVID-19 response, accounting for almost 96 million or 70.4% of the total workforce in health and social work sectors, they still face discrimination and disadvantages including in wages, due to hierarchial structures and stereotypes that shape occupational segregation (3). And yet the women nurses have to lookafter both their families and work. After finishing the paid work, they have to do more unpaid work despite being tired and exhausted, which affects them negatively (4).

References:

1. Sevilla, A. and S. Smith. 2020. Babysteps: The gender division of childcare during the COVID-19 pandemic. IZA DP No. 13302. IZA Institute of labor economics.

2. UN women 2020. COVID-19 and ending violence against women and girls. Brief. New York: UN women.

3. World Health Organization (WHO). 2019. Delivered by women, led by men: A gender and equity analysis of the global health and social workforce. Human resources for health observer-Issue No.- 24, Geneva: WHO.

4. UN 2020b. The impact of COVID-19 on women. Policy Brief. New York: United Nations.