The pandemic has been tough on female workers but it presents a chance to fix long-ignored problems.
In 1961, Elmer Winter, co-founder of American temp agency Manpower, published A Woman's Guide to Earning a Good Living. He wanted to persuade married women (and, crucially, their husbands) that they could go to work without threatening the natural order of things. Winter's genius, writes historian Louis Hyman in his book, Temp, was to "justify women's work without undermining male authority". Manpower's "white glove girls" would have temporary posts rather than careers, Winter wrote, and their earnings would be purely supplemental, allowing families to buy "a second car" or build "a recreation room".
But the old order was already on its way out. The proportion of men participating in the US workforce peaked in the 1950s and has been declining ever since. The steady influx of women into the labour market became vital to sustaining growth in household living standards, not just in the US. This was especially true after recessions, which tended to hit men's jobs harder.
Not this time. Women are over-represented in sectors most hurt by the Covid-19 pandemic: they account for about 60 per cent of workers in accommodation services and retail across OECD countries, rising to 75 per cent or more of the retail sectors in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Women in the developing world account for the large majority of workers in the hugely disrupted garment manufacturing industry.
They have also tended to bear the brunt of school and childcare closures. In the UK, mothers were more likely to have asked to be furloughed than fathers. In the US, the proportion of women in the labour force has dropped back to the same level it was when Ronald Reagan was president.