Role Blurring and Impact of Third Phase Lockdown

Work from home is not a win win situation for all. Especially for women!

With the domestic space functioning as a workplace, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain a work-life balance.

Due to this role blurring, more work life conflicts have spurred up out of high job pressures. 

We have moved into the third phase of lockdown, economic recession is already showing its impact.

This crisis has rapidly moved from a health crisis to a full-blown economic recession, as the Indian economy was already tottering when the virus hit.

Now there would be more job losses, more mental stress and with women disproportionately vulnerable to being laid off, making the already declining female labor force participation rate even lower.

In this Flexible Working, Work–Life Balance at-home women workers are more challenged.

In our rigidly patriarchal society like India, this could drastically have a regressive effect on gender roles and lesser women would then perform well or even continue working.

A lockdown has increased the burden of household work for all families. Children are off from school. They have to be home-schooled, fed and entertained. The elderly are at risk and have to be attended to with greater care than usual. 

In India, the daily lives of middle-class families run on the backs of a slew of service providers: maids, drivers, gardeners, dhobi, garbage collectors, small vendors who bring essential goods right to their doorsteps, and neighbourhood provision stores that have an incredibly efficient home delivery service.

This whole apparatus is now disrupted, as homes with part-time help are confronted with increased housework because the service providers are in lockdown too.

While both men and women are stranded at home, which of the two is dealing with this avalanche of domestic chores and care work disproportionately?

In principle, both. In practice, it’s the women, regardless of whether they hold a job (i.e. earn a wage) or not. If they do, then the double burden of domestic chores and their day jobs is now multiplied many times over, because their day job now has a new name: WFH (work from home).

For those of us who might be fortunate enough to be in families that share the burden, it is difficult to imagine the catastrophic effect of this sudden and seemingly indefinite rise in work pressure on the mental and physical health of women.

For those with secure jobs and a regular salary, a temporary lockdown could be a great way to slow down, rejuvenate and pay attention to their creative side. However, creativity requires not being burdened by the monotony of never-ending domestic chores. 

The question is not “to lockdown or not to lockdown.” The question is: how should we lockdown?

What are the checks and balances that need to be in place? Where should the most vulnerable go if they are distressed?

Read: Coronavirus Lockdown Wisdom Pearls

We can take this one step further. If as a result of the lockdown, gender roles within the household revert to the 1950s, flattening the pandemic curve would have flattened all the gains made by women towards equality across the globe.

We need to be mindful of how we kill the pandemic, without making women’s equality and mental health collateral damage.

As a first step towards that, we need to recognize and highlight the disproportionate gender impacts of the lockdown. 

Read: Facing the Gender Gap in the Workplace

Once the lockdown ends, employers need to be especially mindful of not laying off their women employees disproportionately. Overall, policies aimed at ensuring gender equality in labor force participation and in wages will go a long way towards paving the way for gender equality inside homes.