New Delhi: “We will need to learn to live with the virus”. It is a statement, which has been repeated time and again by global leaders, scientists and medical experts across the globe. We are nine months into the pandemic and it has become amply clear that the pandemic is ravaging a lot more than the health of billions of people across the globe. Even as countries slowly open up their economic activities and lift the restrictions, COVID-19 has already done the damage. Case in point, India’s GDP contracted by a massive 23.9 percent in the first quarter of the financial year itself.
Owing to the closing of schools and daycare centers, the pandemic has left a lot of young parents balancing between working for home and work from home. In the middle of a ravaging pandemic, millions of people across the globe are struggling with a very real threat of losing their jobs. Hence, they continue to put up with the grilling demands of their workforce and personal commitments.
The fact remains that the impact of the pandemic is especially devasting for working women, who may be forced to leave their jobs in a bid to take care of their children. As per experts, the ongoing pandemic is threatening to set back decades of progress that women have made at their professional front. In the middle of the increasing demands of the workplace and being the primary caretaker of the children, working mothers have been particularly hard hit by the crisis.
Women are twice as likely as their male counterparts to leave their employer, a survey finds
According to a new survey conducted by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), it has been found that 41 percent of working mothers in Britain are struggling to balance their work and home commitments, due to the unavailability of childcare. The survey also found that one in six women needed to reduce their working hours, in order to juggle their responsibilities at home, primarily taking care of the needs of their children.
As per yet another survey conducted by WerkLabs to figure out the impact of the pandemic on the present as well as the future, it was found that women are twice as likely as their male counterparts to leave their employer in a year’s time due to their workplace experience during the pandemic.
The new normal demands new workplace practices
The pandemic has impacted our lives in unprecedented ways, and the statistics clearly highlight that maybe it is time to implement new and improved workplace practices. The corporate and work-culture will need to practice more compassion during these testing times and maybe even renew their practices, especially keeping the working mothers in mind. There is no winner during these testing times as we will all need to put a united front to ride out this storm.
