OECD: 60% of women took over most household functions in pandemic

A new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), published this Monday (13), shows the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on women’s lives.

The analysis, entitled “Care in the crisis: gender inequality in paid and unpaid work during COVID-19”, considered the reality of the 25 countries that make up the group.

According to the study, 61.5% of mothers of children under 12 say they have taken on most or all of the extra care work, while only 22.4% of parents report the same. Fathers also agree that mothers take more care of family life.

In addition, mothers of children under 12 were the group most likely to move from employed to non-employed between Q4 2019 and Q3 2020, on average across countries.

The OECD draws attention to a new term that has been growing in the economic debate. The organization claims that societies are experiencing a “shecession” or “momcession”, terms that in English make the union of ‘recession’ with the words “they” or “mother”, that is, unemployment aimed at women and especially , the mothers.

This movement, according to the economics analyst at CNN Thais Heredia is very serious for the economy. “In addition to the women losing the ability to fill vacancies, to quickly return to the labor market, they still find an income lower than what they had when they had to leave.”

Another point raised by the report is that, in the event that the mother continued to be employed and the father lost his job, she continued to be responsible for most of the care for the home and children.

In this scenario, her income continues to be lower, even though the analysis has included OECD members, which are mostly developed countries.

The data show that the participation of mothers in paid employment has done little to mitigate inequality in unpaid working conditions.

Especially in countries where schools and crèches have been closed for a longer time, the situation of women has deteriorated substantially. Mothers bore the brunt of the additional unpaid care work and, correspondingly, suffered the penalties of the labor market.

By contrast, countries that have managed to limit school closing days tend to have smaller gender disparities in unpaid work. Furthermore, countries with historically higher levels of spending on family support also experienced lower levels of inequality in unpaid work in the pandemic.

*Published by Ana Nunes