Editor’s note: It’s Women’s History Month, and to mark International Women’s Day, Peter Bothum asked University of Delaware professors “for their thoughts on the hurdles women faced during the pandemic and what can be done now that we seem to be moving on to live in the ‘new normal.’” This series was first published by UDaily.
By Bahira Trask
Despite a contemporary 21st-century discourse that emphasizes gender equality, the pandemic has had very gender-specific effects globally. According to a recent U.N. report, girls’ and women’s lives worsened in part because they tend to work more in hard-hit economic sectors.
In 2021, about 435 million girls and women were living on less than $1.90 per day, and 47 million were pushed into extreme poverty due to the effects of the pandemic. What we saw is that hard-gotten gains that somewhat improved women’s lives were reversed in a very short period of time.
We should not assume that the lives of all girls and women both in the U.S. and globally mirror the experiences of middle-class educated women. In particular, poorer and marginalized communities were more vulnerable to COVID-19, and the conditions that we saw emerge during the pandemic highlighted inequalities already present. Thus, we had a wide variety of experiences during this period.
What can be done: We need to always apply a gender lens in creating social assistance programs and remember that women may have very different experiences. Care work, which is often ignored by governments, needs to be addressed. Families need to be supported, as they balance paid and unpaid work, including the care of children, individuals with disabilities, ill family members and the frail elderly.
Some solutions include paid leave for caregivers, flexible and hybrid working arrangements, monetary assistance when schools and day cares are closed, and child care for essential workers. We need greater investments in these areas to facilitate women’s reentry into paid employment and to allow them to negotiate the varying familial and work demands that the modern world asks of them.
Bahira Trask is a chair and professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Delaware.
Title IX brought some equity to sports but more is needed
By Earl Smith
As a man with expertise in the sociology of sport and teaching along with conducting research in the Department of Women & Gender Studies, I am often asked about gender equity in sports. I always point to some gains having been made — for example, as a result of Title IX, millions of girls and women participate in sport — but still, not many.
Inside the governing body of intercollegiate sports is a culture of inequity. For example, during the 2021 NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, which was quickly reconfigured due to COVID-19, the budget for the women’s tournament was $35 million less than the men’s. Women players tweeted out images of the “gym” the NCAA paid to have set up in the hotels where their teams stayed. It was a single hotel room, in which staff had placed a few yoga mats and dumbbells. In contrast, the hotels where the men stayed, with the help of corporate partners, transformed ballrooms into fully functional gyms suitable for elite college and professional male athletes.
Men’s and women’s tournaments are currently underway, showing more examples of the ways in which Title IX has failed to deliver gender equality in the sports world.
Earl Smith is a professor in the Department of Women & Gender Studies at the University of Delaware.
