UNDER PRESSURE
Pandemic exposes gender inequities for working parents .
BY INGA KIDERRA
WHEN DAYCARES CLOSED and schools moved to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic , families with children at home were challenged in ways that adult-only households were not . Yet there was also a difference in how fathers and mothers fared . And working mothers may have had it worst of all .
UC San Diego sociologist Mary Blair-Loy studies gender , the economy , work and family . She has documented the conflict between “ work devotion ” and “ family devotion ” for years . In her work , including the award-winning book Competing
Devotions , she has argued that this conflict is not in fact inevitable . Rather , it is a cultural construct with serious consequences for mothers .
She points to recent research showing that the care and education of children during the pandemic landed squarely back on moms not because they were more available , but due to gender bias . These tasks are “ fundamentally , culturally understood to be the mother ’ s responsibility ,” says Blair-Loy .
“ The broader cultural beliefs that we take for granted about gender , work , parenting , mothering , fathering — these have been there all along ,” says Blair-Loy . “ The pandemic exposed them , and it exacerbated them .” But women paid the professional price for parenting long before this coronavirus surfaced , she says . While men tend to get a workplace boost for becoming parents , the opposite is true for women .
“ U . S . culture sees fatherhood as raising a man ’ s stature and his reliability . He ’ s assumed to be the breadwinner and so assumed to be more ambitious and dependable at work ,” she says . “ Fatherhood is also seen as making men warmer and more likeable .”
On the other hand , a woman who has a child is seen as more distracted and less competent . She is assumed to be less loyal to the workplace . “ There ’ s this suspicion that motherhood is uniquely threatening to work devotion ,” says Blair-Loy .
All else being equal , including experience and education , Blair-Loy says , “ men reap a financial bonus , while women take a financial penalty ” for being parents .
In her new book , Misconceiving Merit : Paradoxes of Excellence and Devotion in Academic Science and Engineering , Blair-Loy shows that even academia harbors cultural assumptions that downgrade the accomplishments of mothers and many others . “ It ’ s remarkable that in a professional culture with a sincere belief in meritocracy , we still see women and other marginalized and minoritized groups devalued , net of their actual productivity .”
Blair-Loy says that for those who teach in higher education , especially in science and engineering , motherhood “ pollutes the identity of being a committed scientist .” Some professors have even gone so far as to hide that they ’ re also mothers . “ They don ’ t lie , but they try to cover it up — they have babies in the summer or take a sabbatical rather than a parenting leave .”
One bright side of the pandemic , with its blurring of home life and work life , is that it may have helped us see the gender inequities that were there all along . “ New attention to these problems means we can begin to address them ,” says Blair-Loy . “ It ’ s a good thing because now we can move forward with conversations about solutions .”
16 TRITON | SPRING 2022