Megan Piontkowski, an artist and illustrator, was out of work due to the pandemic (流行病). She learned through a friend that a Brooklyn hospital needed fabric masks for workers. Piontkowski already had some fabric on hand and a sewing machine, so she got to work. She washed the fabric, sewed masks, washed them again, and hung them to dry. After that she drove them to the hospital. When she asked if the hospital would pay for the masks. she was told they had no money.
"I felt very mixed about it," she told VOX, a famous American TV station. She knew the hospital needed masks badly. But meanwhile, "I'm out of work and I 'm being asked to donate them." "The fact that she wasn't compensated (补偿) for sewing highly necessary items felt like a ease of traditional 'women's work' not being valued," Piontkowski said. While larger companies have begun massive cloth masks in recent weeks, much of the work of making the protective clothes, especially in the early stages of the pandemic, was done at home-often by women. That gender breakdown is continuing in some volunteer efforts-about 85 percent of the around 70 volunteers sewing masks for the New York City-based group Face Mask Aid, for example, are women.
And masks are only part of the story. The demands of daily life during the coronavirus pandemic are many, from shopping for food shortages and virus fears to caring for children when schools and day cares are closed. And in many cases, women are the ones figuring out how to meet those new demands. Some women are still working outside the home a essential workers but shouldering care responsibilities when they get home.
It doesn't have to be this way. With more men going into tasks like cooking and educating children, it is potential to reset gender norms. "The pandemic is potentially sparking new conversations about divisions of labor," Jill Yavorsky, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, told VOX.
