The pandemic will not end. Not for women, anyway, and not for many generations.

World leaders sing from the rooftops. Turn on any news broadcast and you can hear a new one every day:

"It's probably fair to say most of the world is moving beyond the emergency phase of the pandemic response." ~ Dr Michael Head, Southampton University.

"We're still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over.” ~ US President Joe Biden

“Today we are truly near the end of this thing. We're leaving the darkest days of the pandemic behind and walking into the warm light of summer," ~ Alberta Premier Jason Kenney

A collective sigh from millions of North Americans--as they tossed out masks and cancelled automatic monthly hand sanitizer delivery--began as a murmur in the Spring, and by Fall of 2022 was a clatter. According to many politicians, doctors, the World Health Organization and more, the end of the pandemic is in sight! It’s just endemic now, like the common cold!

But there is one group for whom the pandemic will never end – women. Not in any of our lifetimes, anyway.

We all saw how the childcare and education crisis--when millions of students were immediately sent home to study remotely--disproportionately affected women much worse than it did men. By November of 2021, roughly 3.5 million American women had left the workforce, either quitting altogether, taking a short leave of absence to care for school-age children, or because they lost their jobs. This represents a nearly 4% drop in the number of employed women versus the previous year. Compared to only a 1% difference for men, it was clear women suffered more due to Covid.

But that was then, and this is now! Aren’t things getting back to normal? Unfortunately, no. The decline in women’s employment has only become worse. While the US employment rate as a whole is now back to its pre-pandemic level, the number of women who are employed is not. A study done by the labor department in August 2022 showed that the unemployment rate for women still lags behind pre-pandemic levels by over half a million workers.

But what is happening, exactly? Kids are–for the most part–back in school. The labor market as a whole has rebounded. Why aren’t women back at work? Why is it taking so long for them to recover?

The answer is multi-faceted. While most public and private schools did eventually return to fully in-person, the daycare industry did not. Struggling to find a reliable workforce, many daycares have cut availability or have even closed their doors entirely. Waiting lists are twice as long as they once were. If a parent (usually a mother) requires the services of a daycare in order to return to work, she is out of luck.

Another problem is that women’s work tends to be the public-facing, “essential” type. Which means when the wee little Covid bug hits, they are most likely to be sent back home. Whether endemic or not, this disproportionately stops women from getting promoted, finding more stable jobs that can weather a mild illness, or—again—finding care for their children who might now stay home sick as well. If they do manage to find jobs again, women are more likely to be underemployed – where the conditions of employment (such as flexibility, remote work, and flex days) are more important than career growth.

Pre-pandemic, things weren’t all roses for the ladies, anyway. In 2019--well before the Sars-CoV-2 was but a twinkle in a bat’s eye--the World Economic Forum estimated that it would take nearly 100 years to reach gender equality. I don’t know about your specific family history, but the average mortality rate says I won’t live that long. By 2021, that same study showed the gap had widened by an additional 36 ½ years. That represents more than an entire extra generation of young women who may never achieve what their male peers will.

In 137 years I will most definitely be long dead. My granddaughter, were I to have one, will probably be long dead as well (I might be the only mom of adult children who insists ‘no rush on those grandkids, kids!’)
Now you might be shouting, “okay! So all the world leaders are wrong! The pandemic will never end for women and we are destined to be underemployed and broke for fourteen more decades – so what? What do we do about it?

I don’t know, stop shouting at me. I’m an underemployed woman, too. I also left the workforce to drag my kids through remote school, and now I’m struggling to get my foot back in the door anywhere, let alone save four billion ladies from generations of gender inequity.

But what I do know is this: Until more employers, public services, and legislators start to recognize the intense sacrifices made by women during the last few years, and that these sacrifices are still ongoing, maybe we shouldn’t be jumping the gun to declare the worst of the scourge over. Maybe we ought to admit that the world has been irrevocably altered, that women helped get us through the worst of it, and that they deserve to be commensurately rewarded now and not 137 years from now.

In other words, someone hook me up with a job before Covid knocks me down again, pretty please.