Redefining Working Women in the United States by Vaishi Sistla

The situation downstairs was almost surreal: my mom, balancing her laptop in one hand  and a spatula in the other, calmly discussing a system failure with her manager while preparing  lunch on the stovetop. As I watched this balancing act, I marveled at the grace my mother  employed to manage her career and housework. However, as the pandemic continued and the  effect of this double burden on her became apparent, I began to realize the hardships American  society has caused her and all employed women. 

For those already versed with the challenge of being their children’s primary caregiver,  the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic worsened their load. Now, they were expected to  manage their remote careers with the cooking, cleaning, and caregiving that accompanied the  shutdown of childcare services. For those in low-wage jobs, or 46% of all employed women pre pandemic, closures and the inability to maintain their careers virtually forced them to adopt the  role of a full-time caregiver – lowering their chance of returning to the workforce.  

In light of major unemployment due to COVID-19, overarching societal biases and  dismissiveness towards working women have prompted an almost-irreversible decline in  workforce representation. Without challenging the double burden that employed women carry  today, gender equality in the American workforce will never be achieved. 

While universal gender norms have consistently preached the idea of stay-at-home  women, this stigma was worsened in the U.S. during industrialization. For middle- and upper class families, it was a sign of status for men to be breadwinners; this effectively forced women  into the housewife mold – defined by Oxford as “a woman whose main occupation is caring for  her family, managing household affairs, and doing housework”. As the World Wars and women  abolitionist movements prompted greater female representation in the workforce, this stereotype

should have been abandoned. However, instead of employed men and women sharing housework and childcare equally, women were expected to maintain both their careers and their societal “responsibility” as housewife. These outdated norms, which continue to be perpetuated today,  and the U.S.’s lack of systems and laws that support employed women have only brought  burnout and exhaustion from the double burden that threatens to take their careers from them. 

Today, more than a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S.’s treatment of  employed women – especially mothers – has proved detrimental to its workforce. Currently,  there are 2.3 million less women in the workforce; out of this group, one in three women do not  plan on rejoining, while an additional 20% would not return to their job if it resumed in-person.  This situation contrasts that of working fathers; while they lost 870,000 jobs, their employment  levels were projected to return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021.  

The disparities between employed mothers and employed fathers can be traced to the systemic oppression of working women in U.S. society, which have remained prevalent despite  women progress. Prejudices from the housewife stereotype directly resulted in 44% of employed  mothers being the sole household provider during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beliefs that women  are not fit to occupy STEM and corporate occupations are displayed in low-wage industries, in  which 28 million women are employed. Most significantly, the dual roles women are forced into  have resulted in mass burnout, exhaustion, and resignations amongst employed women. If  women spent two more hours a day than men handling housework, how is it possible for them to  have as much time as men to focus on their careers while establishing a similar work-life  balance? More significantly, if American society has internalized the belief that women – especially mothers – are pre-assigned to the role of housewife or caretaker over their desired  careers, can workforce gender equality ever be achieved in the U.S.?

Legislative action in the last century has legally given women access to the workforce.  For the U.S. to overcome the societal beliefs regarding women, a cultural shift is needed.  Employers must address the effects of stay-at-home orders on mothers and evaluate how they  can increase their flexibility to account for the additional hours women statistically spend  tending to their households and children. More importantly, it is high time that all Americans  realize that housework is not only “a woman’s job”. This notion along with the internalized  misogyny present in all of us need to be combatted for women to challenge the double burden  they currently carry. Only with these changes will hardworking, employed women, like my  mother, be able to live the balanced work and home life that they deserve.