Our thanks to Nigel for this. He writes:

I saw this headline and must have been sleepy because I foolishly thought it was about more advice or help from health services  based on the much higher risks and death rate for men. But no, it’s just more of the same demand for privileges.

No mention that men are 60% of the deaths. Nor that “male dominated” industries are the ones most at risk of contracting the disease as they carry on working (public transport, taxis, drivers). Certainly not that it is the female dominated industries like care and health that get the vaccine first (I benefitted from this myself).

Of course no thought given to the fact that if it is sectors that have mainly women on furlough than the tax payer is paying them to be at home.

I can see that there may well be difficulties in the future with “flexible” working simply because in the recession employers will be looking to up productivity not reduce it, and it’s hardly the time to introduce more paid time off for women making the costs of employment even higher.

As usual in the case presented the husband is referred to as working full-time as if that’s some delightful privilege in a pandemic.

As always the basic premises seem to be jobs are some sort of gift by a welfare body that just appear and can be altered to suit at will. And that women should have much less obligation to actually turn up and work, yet be paid as if they work full-time.

And look at the case presented. Sharon has a small clothing sales “business” and runs a small charity. The latter presumably not paid before Covid anyway and the former probably a small scale concern, selling to friends. So the full-time working husband has been subsidising these already and continues to do so.

Given that every recession since the 1970s has hit male employment much harder than female employment it seems most likely this will be the same. But of course there will be no “gendered” analysis of that.

Meanwhile Sharon’s husband will pay Sharon twice, once as breadwinner and again as taxpayer. But he won’t be getting a thank you.

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