Traditional roles, which despite us trying to be all modern and progressive, some of us find ourselves defaulting into, mean that since early last year women have borne the brunt of Covid-19. "Women's work", to use that awful and outdated term, was traditionally all those daily tasks that simply have to be done.
Globally this past year, women have lost more jobs than men. Women have quit their jobs or scaled back their hours to sit alongside children and supervise, or in some cases take over, their education.
Working women have been at the kitchen table alongside children and teenagers, vying for bandwidth and space while some men have retreated to work in relative calm. These situations have not escaped many women in this country too.
On Monday I will be thinking of the women of New Zealand past and present, who work, raise children (sometimes on their own), run a house, deal with the minutiae of everyday life and find time and the energy to blow out their hair, pull together food for a special dinner or bake a birthday cake, plus be themselves, a wife, a friend, a colleague, and more.
New Zealand women are capable, creative, gritty and impressive. May we raise more women like this and may we celebrate them.
