During the Covid pandemic, many families were faced with the inevitable choice of moving from dual-income households to single-income households. Stereotypically this role is filled by the man in the household, but there are a growing number of households where the woman is the main earner.
Research from the University of Melbourne is exploring how families coped when female breadwinners lost their income during the pandemic. The study found that female breadwinners were at greater risk of losing their income than their male counterparts, although the ability to work remotely significantly reduced this risk.
Losing revenue
The researchers used data from the annual social and economic supplement of the Current Population Survey to track employment during the pandemic.
The results show that men were much more likely to stay in work during the pandemic than women, whose labor force participation fell significantly at the start of the pandemic and did not really recover. Moreover, it did not seem to matter whether women were the main earners or not.
Being the breadwinner didn’t offer these women any protection, but the ability to work remotely seemed to do so. The study found that when women were able to work online, their employment rate was much higher than women who could not. The boost from remote work turned out to be roughly four times greater for women than for men.
No shield
While previously it was thought that being the main breadwinner in a household could provide some kind of protection against unemployment. These findings highlight that this is not always the case.
The researchers believe that a person’s income is less important than who is expected to provide care. This is reflected in the return to pre-pandemic employment levels that U.S. mothers are now seeing. During Covid, it was well documented that women were doing more household chores, even when both parents were working from home.
For people who can work from home, such as those with professional jobs, remote work has been a lifeline, allowing them to keep their jobs. However, some employers are now pushing for a return to the office.
The pandemic has shown how important care work is in our lives, and we must support those who do it. For married heterosexual mothers, this means recognizing how tough the pandemic has been on them and ensuring they have the option to work from home if their job allows it.
