Women fall behind in pandemic recovery due to childcare needs, job availability

Stephanie Laubensteinsomehowbalanced full-time work, parenting and teaching during a pandemic all while her dog(sort of) ate her son's homework.

Her nine-year-old,Benjamin, made the discovery one day, and it wasn't like thosefabricatedexcuses teachers havedismissed for years.

"He'd comebellowing into my [home] office in the middle of a call and say, 'Mom,the dog ate my underwear,'" Laubenstein said, smiling at the memory.

"Fortunately the people on the video conferencewould laugh and let me go deal with the situation and come back.

"I'm hoping everybody is afforded that flexibility and compassion, because it can be hard," Laubenstein said ofhandlingwork and parenting simultaneously.

Women more affected

Whileparents coped with theclosures of schools,daycaresand their workplaces when the COVID-19 threat was surging, it isclear womenfaced a disproportionateimpact.

After all, womenhave traditionally handled the majority of parenting duties, and holdlow-paying service jobs more vulnerable to the whims of pandemic-induced closures,said Susan Prentice, University of Manitoba sociology professor.

Women are lagging behind, even asthe economy sputters back,"both because the jobs aren't available, and because somebody has to mind the kids," Prentice said.

"Very often in a two-parent family, people sit down and they get out a pen and they look at who's going to make more money and who wants to stay home," she said. "Very often this means that a mother is less likely to go back to work."

The gender gap is wideningand the pandemic is exacerbating it, Prentice said.

Laubensteinspent many days travelling as director of sales and business development at New Flyer. When the pandemic hit Manitoba, she was grounded in Winnipeg. Before long, her son was homeboundtoo, since his school and daycare closed.

Her son didn'tgo tohis father's place, since the family worried of Benjamin's exposure to COVID-19 (he's high-risk)and his father works with the public.

"All of a sudden I became a full-time mom, a full-time businesswoman and a full-time teacher, and it became really hard to balance all of those requirements," she said.

'You just cannot do all of it'

Eventually, she could callupon her parentsonce stay-at-home orders eased, and her son could go back to his father's place. She got counselling help and said herchild-care spot will reopen soon.

As for unprompted office interruptions, her sondoesn't say a peep to his mother anymore he grabs her old phone and sends her text messages instead.

"One of the keys," his mother said, is "you haveto realize you just cannot do all of it."

The economic downturnhas been calleda "she-cession," since women are significantly exiting the workforce due tolost jobs and inadequate child care.

In Manitoba, nearly 11,000 fewer women were working full-timein the labour force thisJune thanthe previous June, a 8.1 per cent decrease, according to Statistics Canada.

The unemployment rate for women over the age of 25, which was 10.3per cent in May, was virtually on par with men at 8.3per cent in June, but that doesn't account forwomen who exited the workforce altogether, Prentice said.

She said a major expansion in child-care spaces wouldaddress this inequity. She said one space for every five Manitoba kids isn't sufficient.

Prentice hopes the pandemic will spur decision-makers to rectify the deficiency.

"I think that many political leaders didn't have to think about how much child care was essential in order for the economy to functionand now they do."

Calls for higher wages, more sick days

Lynne Fernandez,Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues at the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives, is calling for higher wages and more sick days for the jobs our society is finally starting to respect, such as grocery clerks and cleaners.

Until then, she said, men are moving intojobs womenheld.

"Ifthis goes on for a long time, there's actually some real worries about how the long-term effects of women in the labour market could be."

The pandemic also challengedwomen in professional, stable jobs.

Celia Valeland her husband alternated days at work, stretching intoweekends. When it was her turn, she logged 12-hour plus days, and then did as much work as possible on her off dayswhile caring for three kids under the age of nine.

"I would often notsee my kids when they woke up anddidn't see them before they went to bed either."

It got to the point where it wasn't sustainable for herself or her husband, Valelsaid.

"It was just such a prolonged time and not seeing the end, I think it was very demoralizing."

Women working full-time hours in Manitoba this June dropped 8% from 12 months earlier

4 years ago

Duration 2:20

While parents coped with the closures of schools, daycares and their workplaces when the COVID-19 threat was surging, it is clear women faced a disproportionate impact, bearing the brunt of the pandemic pain.

Thankfully, she said child-care spaces came together recently, butshe feels uncertain looking ahead. She doesn't know how the fall will look, whether in-person classes will fully return, and if asecond wave of COVID-19 could unwindthe progress being made.