“I Was Facilitating Everybody Else’s Life. And Mine Had Just Ground to a Halt”: The COVID-19 Pandemic and its Impact on Women in the United Kingdom

Abstract

A growing body of research has highlighted the disproportionately negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women globally. This article contributes to this work by interrogating the lived realities of sixty-four women in the United Kingdom through semi-structured in-depth interviews, undertaken during the first and second periods of lockdown associated with COVID-19 in 2020. Categorizing the data by subgroup of women and then by theme, this article explores the normative and policy-imposed constraints experienced by women in 2020 with regard to paid and unpaid labor, mental health, access to healthcare services, and government representation and consideration of women. These findings highlight women’s varied and gendered experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and emphasizes the role that government can proactively play in attending to gender inequalities throughout its COVID-19 response.

The Gender-Differentiated Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Health and Social Inequalities in the UK: An Exploration of Gendered Themes within Private and Public Discourse and Policy Implications

“…Deterioration in mental health has been found to be one of the most prevalent direct and indirect consequences of the COVID-19 virus (Chaturvedi et al 2022;Dotsikas et al 2023). The most important gendered effects on deterioration in mental health in women have been revealed as being related to increased levels of caring responsibilities and domestic duties within the home and increased levels of domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK and across societies globally (Proto and Quintana-Domeque 2021;Xue and McMunn 2021;Herten-Crabb and Wenham 2022;Dotsikas et al 2023;Kourti et al 2023). As in societies globally, the closures of schools and nurseries during the two lockdowns were found to exacerbate these conditions for women.…”

“…A deeper understanding of these impacts requires recognition of existing and deeply embedded social norms, economic inequalities, and unequal power relations (Oreffice and Quintana-Domeque 2021). Recent evidence has informed understandings of the immediate effects of COVID-19 on gender inequality particularly regarding the increased burden of unpaid care work, health, education, and gender-based violence (O'Donnell et al 2021;Flor et al 2022;Herten-Crabb and Wenham 2022;Dotsikas et al 2023). Moreover, recent research has identified gendered themes in caregivers' discourse and reports on patterns among caregivers (Ioanna et al 2021;Dotsikas et al 2023).…”

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Recent research has evidenced the gender differentiated impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on health and socio-economic inequalities in the UK. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender inequalities particularly regarding the increased burden of unpaid care work, health, education, and gender-based violence have been evidenced in a number of recent studies (O'Donnell et al 2021;Flor et al 2022;Herten-Crabb and Wenham 2022;Dotsikas et al 2023). In particular, gendered inequalities are reflected in gendered themes within caregivers' discourse and reports on patterns among caregivers.

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Identity: Narratives of Heroes, Villains and Victims

“…If war demands civilian sacri ce, then a greater demand on the working mother -the need to 'hold it all together' (Herten-Crabb and Wenham, 2022: 1229), as one study participant described it, or transform into a 'superhero' in the words of another (Herten-Crabb and Wenham, 2022: 1226) -is to be expected. Speci cally, many UK women found themselves constantly balancing household tasks with minding the children and helping with schoolwork (Adisa et al, 2021: Herten-Crabb andWenham, 2022). The 'supermum' can thus be thought of as an extension of the 'double burden' of work and care described in feminist literature (Hochschild, 1989), jointly caused by it and COVID lockdowns.…”

Qualities of transformative leaders in WASH: A study of gender-transformative leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…The COVID-19 pandemic context presents both barriers and opportunities for gender-transformative leadership in WASH. On one hand, the highly gendered nature of the pandemic (Simba and Ngcobo, 2020;Wenham et al, 2020;Herten-Crabb and Wenham, 2022) has highlighted how structural inequalities continue to impact women's roles and experiences. On the other, the disruptions brought by the pandemic and responses present opportunities for social innovations that can drive transformative change (Montgomery and Mazzei, 2021).…”