It is often thought that large-scale shocks to society (e.g., war, epidemics, financial collapses etc) equalize societal inequalities, however, we have witnessed a one-in-century pandemic (and the economic downturn it has triggered), widen rather than narrow an enduring global injustice: gendered organizations. With women bearing the brunt of school closures, mass lay-offs and increase in care duties due to lockdowns, racialized women at increased risk of COVID exposure due to essential worker status, and men reaping the benefits of rapid, technological transformations of the economy-largely amplified by pandemic disruptions-it appears that white, masculine bodies and abilities in the workforce are inoculated from the perils of disaster. Equality matters, especially in times of crisis. Following this idea, the author draws on Joan Acker's "ideal worker" concept to demonstrate how pandemic disparities in the workforce are challenging organizational practices, expectations, and experiences worldwide to evolve. This article concludes with a call for workplace policy reforms as a means to advance gender parity goals, as it is critical to achieving organizational inclusivity, and overall, a thriving society and economy post-pandemic.

COVID-19 and Workplace Policy Re-Imagined: What Is Health and Safety Without Equity?

It takes approximately forty hours to circumnavigate the Earth via airplane. The fastest-moving car travels over 300 miles per hour (MPH) and NASA’s latest spacecraft is set to hit a record speed of 430,000 MPH. Since the ‘80s, technological revolutions have produced some of the world’s most innovative transport inventions, challenging the boundaries of space and time all while fulfilling our human desire to move freely from one place to another. Similarly, globalized trade and urbanization also challenge spatial and temporal borders, as the world economy further integrates. Globalization has propelled humanity into the modern economic era of today, granting us access to new cultures, markets and talent at speeds unseen before. However, there is one significant disadvantage to increasing transborder flows: you can travel from Monrovia, Liberia to Dallas, Texas within the limited temporal window of Ebola’s incubation period (Huebener et al., 2015). With this increase in connectivity, comes an increase in global interdependence.

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