During the crisis linked to Covid19 and the confinements, many women, in particular mothers of young children, had the feeling of a “flashback”, because of the additional domestic work incumbent on them, explains Emmanuelle Santelli. Sociologist, CNRS research director at the Max-Weber Center in Lyon, she interviewed around fifty people before the pandemic about their married life. She questioned about thirty of them again during the pandemic, as part of a research project, to understand what this unprecedented situation had on their private life.
Has the Covid-19 pandemic affected women in any particular way?
The pandemic has affected everyone and women have been affected in a very special way, but I would add that it is more specifically about mothers. Young women in couples without children were able to experience this period as “an enchanted parenthesis”: the young couple had time for themselves, they could have the impression that it was “like the holidays”, indulge in their passions. -time favorites. Let us not forget the differences between social groups, but, as long as there were no children, the young women generally felt that this did not change much in terms of the distribution of tasks, that she either egalitarian or not.
On the other hand, for women who have a small child or several children, the “domestic pressure” which was exerted on them was extremely strong. For mothers, this situation revealed the inertia of social sex relationships. Once in a situation of having to stay at home, as at the time of the first confinement or because the situation of teleworking continues, a large number of women have had the feeling of a step back: like the women of the 1950s, they had to perform domestic and educational tasks, professional prospects were relegated to the background …
Has confinement also enabled some men to measure more concretely what domestic work was and, perhaps, to promote a rebalancing?
Men took care of doing “home schooling” – I am thinking in particular of male teachers – but apart from these rather marginal situations, this activity was mostly taken over by women. And since a large majority were also employed – either at their place of work or teleworking – the organization of domestic life and the mental burden inherent in it were even greater than usual.
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