“Why aren’t the men doing any home-schooling?” complains a manager at a large UK financial institution. She reports that women team members with children are more likely to skip video calls or ask for deadline extensions than males. Amid fresh lockdowns, working mothers have often taken primary responsibility for childcare and home schooling within heterosexual two-parent families.
Coronavirus has hurt the incomes and prospects of many of these women. Mothers are more likely to go on furlough or quit altogether, according to a study last year by the UK’s Institute for Fiscal Studies. Those that continue working may miss out on raised salaries and promotions if their performance is impaired by domestic duties. “We are unpicking 40 years of progress towards gender parity,” warns Sarah Jackson, visiting professor at Cranfield University School of Management.
The negative male stereotype is of a man who bags the spare room as a home office in which to hide…