Being Mothers in the Time of COVID-19 Pandemic. Reflections and Pedagogical Implications

The health emergency and the restrictive measures adopted by various Countries to deal with the consequences of COVID-19 are risking to compromise important results achieved so far in the field of gender equality. However, the pandemic has increased critical issues in other areas such as care sharing, gender-based violence, entrepreneurship, education and poverty. The current situation risks exacerbating gender inequalities and making society less inclusive. In particular, the closure of schools and distance learning during Spring 2020 have had a strong impact on the educational practices and daily routines of children and adolescents, requiring the help and supervision of adult figures. Often mothers found themselves having to work at home but at the same time having to care their children in online education, or working outside and having to find a solution for managing their children, or even worse, losing their jobs. This paper will try to analyse, from a gender perspective (Decataldo, Ruspini, 2014), the results of a research conducted by the Author on the pedagogical consequences of distance learning both at family and school level, in particular on the role of mothers. Data collected once again show a disadvantage of the female gender, in particular of mothers, who suddenly found themselves changing life and work times with a greater burden of domestic and other work or having lost their jobs. According to their testimonies, the greatest difficulties were precisely those related to the reconciliation of their own work time with their children's school time and the management of the consequences of the lockdown in the child-development process.