Sonya Lennon: It's been a full year of mums putting ourselves second, it's time to change
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One full year of putting ourselves last - Enough is enough.
‘Mum, why do all the kids see more of their Mum’s parents than they do of their Dad’s?’ This question was astutely posed to me by one of mine at the age of six.
‘Em, well, I just like checking in, I know they like seeing me and I know they love seeing you.’ Whether it’s the hard wiring of nurture, societal norms, or the embers of Catholic guilt. The fact is, duty calls, and we run.
The very un-sugar-coated name for this is ‘unpaid work’. It includes cooking, cleaning, and caring for children, the elderly, and the ill.
Women have historically shouldered a disproportionate percentage of these duties. However, for one full year now, we’ve been running a marathon at a sprint pace. Whether you’re ‘caring back’ (parents) or ‘caring forward’ (children), or ‘U-bending’ (both) there is an expectation and a desire to nurture, protect, and selflessly care for the ones we love.
However, things have all come a little unstuck lately. We had been burning out as supernovas before the pandemic, now, it seems, we can’t see the rice for the risotto.
UN Women published data on the effects of Covid-19 on women, it’s not pretty. On an average pre-Covid-19 day, women spent about three times as many hours on unpaid domestic work and care work as men.
However, that has now expanded. On childcare alone, women’s hours have rocketed from 26 to 31 while men’s hours have increased from 20 to 24.
Add to that the fact that parents are getting more help from daughters than sons and regrettably, given recent strides, more women than men are leaving the workforce because of this intense pinch point.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where the gender pay gap can’t be closed because of the gender pay gap. More women than men fall out of employment due to levels of income within double-income homes. A figure which has been exacerbated during Covid.
There’s a guilty niggle at the back of my head, and I suspect it’s not just me. No, I’ll do it because it’ll be quicker, I’ll do it because it’ll be better, and quite frankly, I’ll do it because that’s the way I like it done. It’s a guilt, duty, expectation, control cocktail, make mine a large G-Dec, please.
We have to start letting go, democratising our homes and putting in place responsible and accountable systems for the way we live within our own four walls.
From the age of 10, most children (and adults) should be able to load and empty a dishwasher, load and empty a washing machine, and make their own school lunches.
From the age of 12, most children (and adults) should be able to make pasta or an omelette for dinner, cut the grass, change a bed, I could go on.
May I suggest that fish fingers and waffles cooked by a 14-year-old once a week won’t kill you, and that food presented to you, which eases your load, has a sweetness that no Ottenlengi feast prepared by yourself can deliver? Ok, that’s a stretch, but stay with me.
As parents, we must remember that we are not raising kids, we’re raising adults. If you want your sons and daughters to feel equal, empowered, and valuable, independent and smart, they must believe they are by the actions of everyone in the home.
Maybe the fact that everybody can see what it takes for a home to run smoothly, because of Covid, means that we can rethink who does what, for everyone’s benefit.
However, every picture tells a different story the further away you stand from it. Covid may be a tapestry of millions of individual stories but it is also a big legend for our societies and our economies.
Based on UN Women’s data, we know that the world’s economies are made possible by the unpaid and undervalued care work of women and girls. That’s 9% of global GDP — a whopping $11trn.
Professor Linda Scott author of believes that if women were empowered in our economies, trillions of dollars could be unlocked along with a better kinder world and way of being.
Sounds good to me.
In conversation at the 2020 WorkEqual Solution Series, she spoke of unpaid work, predominantly done by women, as the economic infrastructure that allows economies to function.
By that logic, and given the unlockable spoils of the Double X economy, we should be looking at universal, sustainable, free childcare as a baseline. Such is the case in the global exemplar, Iceland. I asked Ambassador, Embassy of Iceland in London Mr Stefán Haukur Jóhannesson what business case could be put to our Government to convince them that this is the right decision. "Follow the numbers", he said, at the bare minimum, this infrastructural innovation pays for itself, at best it increases GDP by 20%.
Sounds like a budgetary line item to me!
Men, we need you to step up, at work and at home. Martin Amis, in his warped feminism, said of the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s that we took the right to work, but forgot to give over half the domestic duties. He was right there.
The UN Women tracker data shows that 206 countries and territories have taken a total of 1,813 measures to address the economic and social fallout of Covid-19. However, only 85 have taken measures to strengthen women’s economic security.
There are things that can be done, and policy is the best place to start. Childcare, parental leave, women in leadership and decision-making, legislating against negative societal norms, and that Gender Pay Gap Bill, let’s start writing them into our laws, our national culture, our way of being.
Women don’t want to put themselves last, we are better than that.
- Sonya Lennon is one half of womenswear brand Lennon Courtney. The Bold and The Beautiful Collection launches April 27 at Dunnes Stores.