Coronavirus could set back efforts to get mothers into workplace by two decades

Many women are ‘easy to get rid of because they are on zero-hours contracts’, warns gender equality charity. Maya Oppenheim reports

Trend for mothers and single parents entering workplace ‘reversing’ (Getty)

The coronavirus emergency could roll back efforts to get more mothers into the workplace by two decades, campaigners have warned.

Fawcett Society, a leading gender equality charity, said women are routinely pushed into opting for flexibility over job security in order to care for their children and other relatives.

Sam Smethers, the organisation’s chief executive, warned working mothers would be the worst affected during the recession which follows the Covid-19 crisis.

“If you look back at the last 20 years the big increases in labour market participation have been among mothers and single parents in particular,” Ms Smethers told PA news agency.

“What we are seeing now is that trend is reversed, so unless we correct that ... we will literally have a significant step backwards. Women are over-represented in low-paid work and precarious work.

“They’re people who are very ‘dispensable’ or otherwise easy to get rid of because they are on zero-hours contracts.”

A report last month by the London School of Economics found the pandemic is exacerbating the gender gap as women shoulder the brunt of childcare responsibilities and homeschooling during lockdown – whether they are working or not.

Researchers found women are more likely than men to lose their jobs in the forthcoming recession because a greater proportion work in sectors which are predicted to be hardest hit such as hospitality, leisure, tourism and the arts.

A damning study by Young Women’s Trust recently found one in five young women have lost work because of coronavirus upheaval.

It unearthed a slew of distressing stories of women facing destitution and struggling to buy food and other basics during the public health crisis – as well as having to do unpaid care work due to childcare providers and schools closing and having to look after people who have contracted Covid-19.

Women are radically overpopulated in the care sector – with recent NHS figures showing more than 80 per cent of adult social services jobs in 2019 were carried out by female workers, and government figures showing women make up the majority of informal carers in the UK.

Experts recently told The Independent parents may struggle to find childcare as the crisis pushes providers out of business.

Roughly two-thirds of early-years providers decided to shut during lockdown because of money troubles. While the majority of nurseries that stayed open lost income as demand for their services plummeted.

Mandu Reid, leader of the Women’s Equality Party, warned some childcare providers have increased their costs during the lockdown.

She said: “Coronavirus has put childcare in extreme peril and this is not an exaggeration. What we have is a situation where the government has treated childcare as an afterthought at best or completely overlooked it at worst during this crisis. We are looking at 10,000 childcare providers to have gone out of business by the end of lockdown. That equates to up to 250,000 childcare places.”