The Fallout from the Pandemic is Worse for Women

Leaders need to help the she-cession become a she-covery

Back in the previous century, just after my younger sibling started primary school, my mother approached my father with a proposition.

If he allowed — yes, “allowed” — her to go back to work, she could bring in enough money as a nurse to pay off our mortgage in half the time. She promised none of us would ever miss a home-cooked meal.

My father looked at her solemnly over his black Buddy Holly glasses. “Okay,” he said. “I’m fine with that. As long as nothing slides around here.”

Decades later, I’d cringe at the way my mother made him the hero of that story. She thought she was lucky to have found such a great husband.

I thought my dad was a Neanderthal.

We’re so much more enlightened now.

Right?

My normally calm Chief Operating Officer sounds close to tears, sending me into spirals of guilt. She’d been awake past midnight the night before, and I immediately leap to a conclusion: work must be causing her stress.

As the CEO, and her boss, I feel responsible.

“No,” she says. “It’s not that easy. I was up late because it’s the only time I can get a minute to myself.”

I’d admired her discipline in being asleep by 2300 every night, but she tells me that now, she finds herself staying awake staring at a screen or online shopping. Or just worrying about what might come next.

Like many people out there — those lucky enough to still have a job, anyway — she’s juggling childcare and a demanding executive job in the middle of a pandemic, and even though she’s married to a “great guy,” a disproportionate amount of the burden is falling on her shoulders.

Her husband “helps out,” but “he wants a medal for making a pot of mac and cheese” or playing with the kids — loudly — to keep them out of her way during a Zoom meeting.

My little nonprofit is a microcosm, and a very privileged one at that, of a global phenomenon.

As economies around the world start to emerge from the forced hibernation brought about by…

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