COVID-19 has brought about a series of challenges before the global community ranging from large-scale unemployment and loss of livelihoods, an ever weakening and fragile healthcare system, gross violation of human rights and an enhancement in issues like child trafficking, domestic violence and gender discrimination- but while having drastically altered the world outside, the pandemic has also changed the domestic sphere and the dynamics within families.
The pandemic has confined many working professionals to the confines of the home, and in the reduced or altered presence and availability of domestic help and assistance, the domestic chores have fallen on the shoulders of family members and most heavily on those of women, irrespective of their presence or absence in the job market. While bedrooms have been converted into workstations for a large number of men, women continue to carry the greater burden of domestic responsibilities even while they too have been succumbing to the demands of work from home. If the pandemic could have been an opportunity for men and women to collaborate on domestic chores, it has heightened the gender divide and compelled women deeper into their traditionally ‘feminine’ roles. How are women dealing with this situation? How are men, who think differently, acknowledging this crisis and developing alternative ways of sharing responsibilities with their female counterparts?
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