The COVID‑19 pandemic exposed the load that mothers carry — and it’s still being ignored today |
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated and brought into focus the ongoing disproportionate burden on mothers when it comes to household logistics, child care and financial inequity. It also revealed just how deeply embedded and structurally reinforced that burden is.
When labour that had previously been a shared social responsibility shifted into individual households, the load fell mainly to women. But perhaps even more important is that the true impact of this burden was invisible — even to women themselves.
Data over three years, from 2020 to 2023 — the height of the pandemic — laid bare the reality of a poorly scaffolded social structure. What had been seen as informal or “natural” for women to take on was, in fact, an uneven distribution of labour and responsibility.
That reality has clear economic effects. Canadian women earn approximately 69 per cent of the average salary of men. Mothers’ salaries also decrease by 49 per cent in the year after a child is born and 34 per cent 10 years later, while fathers’ salaries are largely unaffected.
This disparity — often referred to as the motherhood gap or child penalty — increases over time, crosses generations and is rooted in how societies value and distribute care work.
Studying families during COVID-19
Even before the pandemic, women were often responsible for the majority of housework and child care.
This was the status quo when COVID-19 arrived, as social isolation regulations increased family mental-health concerns while simultaneously decreasing social support.
Between January 2021 and August 2023, qualitative data was........