Gender Stereotypes and The Corona Virus Pandemic initiated Lock down

While during this pandemic, women majorly make up the frontline, having up to a seventy percent stake in the workforce of the medical and the social fields, they are walking a quickly thinning line, of being soldiers as they step out of their doors, while stepping into the victim’s shoes as they cross the same threshold. Cases of domestic violence against women have gone up globally, another unified rise apart from COVID-19 infections. In Europe alone, there was a sixty percent rise in calls received against domestic violence.

Experts blame the economic impact of the pandemic on this. Due to increased financial stresses, especially in middle and low-income households, chances of domination of and practice of physical aggression on the biologically susceptible gender increase. This form of physical aggression is also viewed by children, who may or may not be inclined to such behavior. But these sights could engrave themselves in the child’s developing mind which may start to bend towards such conduct in the future. A vicious mindset is thus propagated, and another social injustice finds a way into our future.

On the brighter side, the lockdown forcing men and women to stay at home may instigate more respect for women’s previously ignored work. As men and women toil together, coping with the work-from-home schedules, men who previously often have been known to brush away the women’s contribution, both financial and non-financial, to the household, might realize that women work equally hard as they do, if not harder. This situation has the potential to show men and the rest of the household, the levels to which a woman bends her back to make the ends of her personal and professional life meet.

Also, with the whole family at home, boys, who stereotypically are not taught household chores, may learn them. Boys seeing the females of the house doing regular activities that are not impossible for them to do either, might just be the calling bell of a much-needed shift of ideologies. If boys are taught household chores from a young age, it will not only make them aware of the significant contribution of women in the household and increase their respect for them subsequently but will also make them independent in their own right, lessening the prejudices women will have to face in the future.

While the lockdown allows the poison to be spilled into the child’s brain through the various activities of the parents, it will also open up the opportunity to diffuse the already existing poisons. A positive change can be brought in by the parents by making the child aware of several injustices prevalent in the society which find a base in unsubstantiated preconceived notions, unquestioningly passed down from generation to generation. Parents can procreate a positive and equitable outlook in the child, thus not only making him or her an aware citizen but also breaking a cycle of continued monstrosities against women.

While we may be locked up in our homes, it is not necessary to restrict our thoughts as well. We must open our minds to the changes that need to be brought about for an egalitarian society. This lockdown allows us to put an end to social biases, which are long overdue. Taking this opportunity is not very difficult. A child, like malleable clay, is molded by the parents. The parents get an opportunity like never before, to set an example and to change the frame of mind of the child that may have been bent wrongly by societal practices. This lockdown sure is potent enough to bring changes into societal thinking, but its final credibility depends on our actions and decisions now, for as Leonardo da Vinci said, “Everything connects with everything”.