10-24-2021 Women to Watch - Flipbook - Page 41
Danielle Vinson, left, and Gia
Johnson are the co-founders
of Mothers Helping Mothers,
an organization that provides
support to mothers such as
a clothing share for children.
PHOTO BY BARBARA HADDOCK
TAYLOR
posts in the Facebook group detailing this experience.
Marcelina Tillman-Wallace, 24, shared her story.
The Northwest Baltimore resident contracted COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic and took
a month to recover. She lost both of her jobs and
dropped out of her classes at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County when she fell too far behind.
Many women “fell through the cracks” during this
crisis, Johnson said. She worked throughout the pandemic with HER Resiliency, a nonprofit helping vulnerable young women, especially those experiencing
homelessness.
“We’ll go where we have to go and do what we
have to do for our ladies,” Johnson said. “But we
ask that they work for what they want. You can’t sit
home and expect me to bring you a mansion, because I don’t live in one myself.”
A wider look at working women
Liana Sayer, a sociologist at the University of
Maryland, has been working on a long-term study,
“Assessing Social Consequences of COVID-19,” since
the early days of the pandemic. The team is monitoring people’s time use throughout the day, as well as
perceptions of the division of labor in a household.
So far, she’s analyzed data from the first wave in
April and May 2020. In married, heterosexual couples, men spent more time in paid work and women
spent more time in housework. She also found that
women took care of children or others more steadily
throughout the day compared to men, who provide
care mostly in the mornings and evenings.
Another finding, Sayer said, was stress increased
more for women without children than mothers;
possibly because of the elimination of commutes
between work, school and home, or because of employer flexibility during the early pandemic days.
Sayer cautioned, however, that this data may not reflect stress levels as the pandemic persisted. And not
all women had the privilege of being able to work at
home.
Adele Newson-Horst, coordinator of women, gender and sexuality studies at Morgan State University,
noted that Black and low-income women, in particular, had no choice but to keep working in-person.
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