The 2020 Pandemic: A Mindset Catalyst?
Did we need a global pandemic to make us realize that women may not need to make a choice between their career and potential motherhood?
The COVID-19 pandemic has overcast countries, families, healthcare infrastructures and essential workers with misery, helplessness, anxiety, financial strain, and much, much more. It has revealed caveats in governance, flaws in theoretically working systems, and social inequalities across the world. However, we must not fail to acknowledge the boons out of this pandemic — this is not to say that the pandemic is positive, but I am an optimist at times. Female leadership in politics has been recognized, the youth is questioning institutionalized concepts, and culprits are slowly being held accountable. It has, in a way, led the way to a hopefully united society.
‘Work From Home’, or #WFH, is the norm, and corporations and organisations globally have adapted to WFH conditions, much to the pleasure of video conferencing and software companies. In the past few months, numerous studies and articles have been released on the benefits and pros of working from home, and talks of shifting to a remote work culture permanently have gained traction — most prominently, at Twitter. The workforce has understood that thousands of rupees do not have to be spent on travel and face-to-face meetings, sitting in traffic is a waste of productive hours, and they do work better when they can cook themselves scrumptious food! But more interestingly, the easy adaptability and increased efficiency that WFH has proven could be revolutionary for women. A woman has often had to work harder to ‘truly earn’ her job, since there’s an apparent ‘risk of losing her to child rearing’.
For decades, women in India and around the world have been forced to make a choice (if they are lucky) between having a career or experiencing motherhood; if they’re the unlucky lot, you already know what they had to choose — motherhood, or societal shaming. The duty of raising the family and ensuring the smooth running of the household are tasks that have traditionally largely fallen upon women. This however hasn’t dampened the resilience of a woman consciously wanting to work along with these roles. I will try to write this through the lens of feminist ideals that I fully stand by, but well aware of the realities of our society’s mindset and long held ‘principles’, to criticise and evolve them. I don’t believe WFH is a game changer in terms of making working easier for men or women alike — parents or not; rather it can potentially catalyze deep rooted mindsets and misconceptions about women working while being a mother as well.
This article is to address all those employers who asked that 28-year-old educated woman during her job interview: “So, when are you having kids? You know, so we know which year we expect you to go on maternity leave if we offer you the job.”, or “Oh, congratulations on your marriage! So, are you applying for this job for some short-term income before expanding the family?” And for all those family members who told their wife, daughter, sister, mother, or daughter-in-law: “What do you mean you are not quitting your job? Your baby will not get proper nurturing or love, and it will be your fault.” or “I don’t think you should go back to work! You have enough money from the family, and your child is used to having you around all the time, so don’t disrupt his childhood!” or simply “No, you cannot work.” once she sets foot into motherhood, but still desires to be part of the workforce. We need to challenge the ethos.
Outcomes of WFH challenge the decades-held ideologies that one can only be productive in an office space, or that one needs to spend overtime hours doing work at the office. A designated, constant focus of 8–9 hours per day is no longer the ultimate productivity achieving strategy for an employee. With WFH potentially continuing in the long term, and the coronavirus not vanishing anytime soon, economies cannot come to a halt. The productive capacity of employees unleashed with the pandemic can prove to be revolutionary for stay-at-home mothers, and mothers not given the choice to pursue a career alongside. Further, this has potential to incentivize women who are not motivated to join the workforce at all, in foreseeable hopes of becoming a mother in the near future.
Staying at home nurturing your child while working and earning — possible.
Dropping your kid off to school and starting work maybe 30 minutes later than others, and taking a small break to pick them up and drop them to extracurricular activities, and making up for lost time while working an hour later sometime in the day — possible.
Pacing yourself throughout the day and multitasking — possible. (We all know women already do that 24/7 — working or not!)
Starting your own business from home — possible.
This is a short list, but endless possibilities and benefits for mothers wanting to work simultaneously have arisen from this pandemic. I am not claiming that this ends the potential struggles that women — and mothers — might face in the workplace, at home, or in motherhood, but it definitely paves the way for a more inclusive workforce, a more sustainable productivity strategy, and in India’s case, a social change with a potential boom in productivity with a newly enabled workforce. If Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, can give birth while in office (only the second woman leader to do so, after Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan), quickly overturn gun laws in the country after a mass shooting, and lead New Zealand to 0 active COVID-19 cases while being a new mother, so can you.
Parents currently working from home could argue the opposite of these claims — citing the not-so-ideal need to converge home and business, and the inability to provide devoted attention to their family and work as they usually would. While that is a very real problem, I believe the availability of the option to work from home, and the appreciation for pacing oneself whilst maintaining a work-life balance born out of this pandemic is going to catalyze families and the sect of women in the labour force who do not believe in the ability or fruition of doing both. Fatherhood isn’t referred to as a full-time job, so why should motherhood? WFH and the evolving nature of work is a step in the direction of addressing that — it doesn’t mean mothers should work from home to take care of the child while the father goes to work (once all is normal again) — it is simply a phenomenon that has brought up an unanswered — and unasked — question about our society’s beliefs, its deep rooted gender roles and its repercussions; a question that reinforces empowerment of women, and confronts misconstrued societal biases. It has potential to introduce dynamic changes in mindsets — how little girls envision their aspirations and capabilities, how young women pursue what they are truly passionate about, and how families, societies, and employers, are going to value a female’s dreams, and help turn her aspirations into action.
WRITTEN BY,
Malvika Sriniwasan
Campus Ambassador at Aspire For Her
