Greater gender gap during confinement

29/05/2020 - 16:16

CARE TASKS. Women spend more hours on care and work the same, so they sleep fewer hours: either because they work at night or because they get up earlier to work.

Corresponsabilitat

The main burden of unpaid work continues to be on women. At the same time, they are also the ones who tend to make their jobs more flexible so that they can take care of other people.

On May 6, El País published an article that collected the main conclusions of the first investigations carried out during the pandemic regarding co-responsibility in care. The results show that men participate more in domestic and care tasks. However, if you analyze it in detail, you can easily see how the domestic burden has been multiplied due to the confinement, the closings of the schools and the cessation of various activities. Therefore, the pandemic has widened the gender gap.

The main burden of unpaid work continues to fall on women. At the same time, they are also the ones who tend to make their jobs more flexible so that they can take care of other people.

These conclusions are the result of several investigations, among which we find “Uses of time during confinement” carried out by Amparo Aguado and Cristina Benlloch, professors at the University of Valencia, and “Who is in charge of domestic tasks during confinement? 19, labor market and use of time at home” carried out by Lidia Farré and Libertad González.

According to the first results obtained, women dedicate more hours to care and work the same, so they sleep fewer hours: either because they work at night (once the tasks have been completed) or because they get up earlier to work (before to start with care tasks).

We must rethink the social, labor and gender distribution of time. In an article in the Público newspaper on March 7, the co-coordinators of the Barcelona Time Use Initiative for a Healthy Society, Ariadna Güell and Marta Junqué, recalled that women are one of the groups most affected by the unequal distribution of time, especially in the field of care.

As Güell and Junqué affirm well, “to end inequality, a cultural change is necessary, recognizing and becoming aware of the right to one’s own time.” The new paradigm derived from the crisis by the COVID19, in which telework has become massive, you must introduce your own time as an inalienable right, and the achievement of this goes through a distribution of domestic tasks and equitable care.