In a crisis situation such as the pandemic, the trend was to return to the more traditional organization of gender roles, based on biological differences, women taking care of the home, children and the elderly, and men more concerned for maintaining the role of providers.
Although these roles are more widely shared today, during times of isolation concerns were distributed in a more traditional way. Throughout the history of humanity, great milestones such as the World Wars or contraceptive pills, and the struggles to achieve equal rights and opportunities, promoted changes and an evolution in the role of women both in the public sphere and in the public sphere. the private. Today we see that despite the progress, a more traditional dynamic prevails within households that the pandemic reinforced.
Why? Because change always generates fear and, in a critical situation, each one resorts to familiar, familiar places: the men most concerned about unemployment, for continuing to be the breadwinners of the home, and the women attentive to food, to the tasks of children. Although men are helping more and more (as seen in the multi-award-winning advertising campaign “The Helpers”), “helping” is not the same as sharing responsibilities.
If isolation brought to light – as never before – the invisible relevance of home care tasks, almost inevitably this translates into resignation for them and their own commitments, we saw in our studies that one in four women evaluated resigning activities training or reduce your working hours.
We know that there is still a difference in the number of women and men in leadership positions, also in the salaries that men and women receive for the same tasks. Even in the same positions and equal or more qualified than men, women earn about 30 percent less than their male counterparts. And in the highest positions, the glass ceiling persists as they remain a minority: only 2 out of 10 top decision positions are held by women.
But to this we must add another dimension of analysis: the fear of failing with what is socially supposed to be the model that women should follow. Being or not being “good mothers” has always been an important social imperative and this mandate is what is now being questioned. We see that in the new generations, either the age to have children is delayed or there are fewer children per family because women are also prioritizing their time for their preparation or work career. The difficulties suffered by mothers during the pandemic intensify these decisions in Millennials and Centennials especially.
The networks are helping to make this “side b” visible. At the time, Mamá Lucchetti’s advertising was very disruptive, showing mother not wanting to wash the dishes or listen to her children, and precisely this type of advertising was highly valued for being encouraged to show a reality that does not coincide with the idealized image of the mothers. For advertising it was all a disruption because the woman was always shown as a mother – a housewife, object of desire, affectionate, kind, patient, helpful and that is not what happens in reality.
Today we can see that from Instagram or TikTok accounts, women share aspects of motherhood that were not shared socially, fears, anguish, fatigue. It can be recognized that motherhood, although it is a source of pride, happiness and is a long-awaited milestone, not everything is happiness and there are many moments of despair, depression, sadness, of feeling that one cannot. This sharing of “the B side” from a “peer” perspective is a way of escape, of containment, of being able to feel on an equal footing with other mothers.
Founder and CEO of Trendsity and President of SAIMO
