Back in March, Google announced a 75 per cent spike in domestic violence- related searches. The federal government responded with an extra $150 million to family violence services. It made me wonder how much searching was ‘normal’, and not newsworthy. It made me think about all the searches that looked for answers, and what the story was.
I wondered how I could put that story together, how you would understand what the key search terms are, and what else needs to be in place to help any woman desperately googling for a solution. The next day I dropped my son off at daycare, and there was almost no one there. The government stepped in to help for the next twelve weeks, and it turned out to be my other child’s school that closed down. It’s now been nearly six months of childcare uncertainty here in Melbourne, and the story about how women look for help with Google was never written.
When I read Jess Hill’s piece in The Monthly which calls the coronavirus lockdown a ‘gendered pandemic’, I felt heard. I wanted everyone to read this article, to understand that feminist wins were being erased in the name of a national emergency, and that women were stepping up to the now larger domestic workload with a career cost further down the line.
I wondered, honestly, how many of my friends would have the energy to read it, when they are already tearing their hair out and crying in the shower.
Because Hill’s article doesn’t end on a happy note (spoiler alert!). It can’t, because there aren’t enough women ‘at the table’, to borrow from Sheryl Sandberg. And something we want is a quick solution, a bit like the woman who’s trapped and googles when her abuser isn’t looking.
What women get, and not men, is an assumption that if we have children then we secretly enjoy lockdown. ‘You’ll look back at this fondly!’ is the overall message from people who don’t want to have a conversation about this.
'The "gendered pandemic" terminology shouldn’t be a surprise; because epidemics have always hurt women more.'
But, we won’t reminisce about this time. How can we? Everyone is worried, the children are angry, we’ve no idea what the future holds, and we can’t go anywhere. Please tell me what I’m going to miss.
Men are allowed to worry about business. They earn more, so they