It has long been a known, yet underappreciated, fact that women across the globe are responsible for approximately three quarters of the total unpaid work, adding up to approximately 11 billion hours each day (Langer et al., 2015). Globally women undertake three times more care and domestic work than men, (UN Women, 2020)

Unpaid and unrecognised work often involves work pertaining to care responsibilities, which our patriarchal society often deems low value and in not accounted for within mainstream economics. As such, these duties, although essential for the functioning of every economy and vital for the success of every industry, are not viewed as actual contributions.

The Covid-19 pandemic significantly impacted all aspects of life for everyone. However, it became evident relatively early into the pandemic that the nature of the consequences varied by demographic, with sex having a significant influence on the way the pandemic influenced people.

For instance, the Covid-19 virus itself reportedly impacted the health of older men disproportionately. At the same time, the burden of the economic impact was mostly carried by younger demographics and women. Although women seemed to be more resilient to the health effects of COVID-19 in terms of health outcomes, the non-pharmaceutical interventions enforced by governments across the world, mostly affected employment sectors in which a larger proportion of women work, thereby disproportionately enhancing gender inequalities in all areas of labour, including the unpaid and unrecognised work, as well as financial vulnerability of women. Moreover, the increase of remote working conditions impacted the workload of mothers of small children more than any other demographic (Eurofound, 2020).

The non-pharmaceutical interventions implemented by governments in order to slow down the spread of Covid-19 saw a majority of tasks usually afforded to other people or institutions outwith the home move into the sphere of domestic chores. These activities included, amongst other things, domestic work, education and childcare and the care of elderly dependents – all activities which are generally afforded to female gender stereotypes (Power, 2020). Thus, much of these activities were undertaken by women in an unpaid and unrecognised capacity, often in addition to their usual full-time work (Pettigrew, 2021).

Although the media has emphasised the increase in care and domestic work undertaken by men during the Covid-19 pandemic, which of course has been an improvement, it was also the case, that the unpaid and unrecognised duties of women significantly increased as well, often disproportionately impacting women’s mental health (Chauhan, 2021). To illustrate, Mascherini and Nivakoski (2021) calculated that over the summer of 2020, women spent an average of 37 hours a week on childcare related tasks, more than 60% more than men, and almost equivalent to a full time work load in itself.

Today, on IWD 2022, the Centre for Trafficking, Exploitation and Modern Slavery Studies hopes to place the spotlight on all the additional work undertaken by women over the past 2 years.