New Study To Look At How Women Have Coped During The Pandemic

How New Zealand women have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and the strategies they have devised to cope will be researched in a new project led by the University of Waikato.

Professor Holly Thorpe, a sociologist in Te Huataki Waiora School of Health at the University of Waikato, has received a two-year James Cook Research Fellowship to understand the social, economic, and emotional toll the global pandemic has had on New Zealand women and how they have coped in a time of turmoil.

“These are very pressing questions. Every day that I wake up as a working mother in the midst of the pandemic and lockdowns I know I have responsibilities to my family, to my community, to my students. These are feelings that every woman I talk to is experiencing right now. But women are experiencing these uncertain and stressful times in many different ways,” says Professor Thorpe.

Globally, women have lost more than 64 million jobs in 2020 due to the pandemic, resulting in an estimated $800 billion loss of income. Their physical and mental health has also been heavily impacted for both frontline workers and in the home and rates of domestic violence have surged, resulting in what some refer to as the ‘shadow pandemic’.

In New Zealand 90 percent of the jobs lost during the pandemic in 2020 were from women and while the Government’s Wellbeing Budget recognised the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women and young people, we have yet to see gender specific strategies to address this, says Professor Thorpe.

“Even once the vaccine rollout is complete, we know the social, economic and emotional effects of the pandemic will continue to be disproportionately felt by New Zealand women, including the trauma associated with that,” says Professor Thorpe.

“This research will help us understand not only the impact the pandemic has had on New Zealand women, but also how through the incredible social disturbance they have found ways to look after themselves and others.”

Professor Thorpe will lead a multidisciplinary cross-cultural team made up of Māori, Pacific and Muslim early career researchers including Dr Grace O’Leary (Te Arawa), Mihi Nemani (Māori-Samoan, Ngatiwai) and Dr Nida Ahmad.

They will focus their research on three core groups: mothers with young children, young women in low socioeconomic communities and women with chronic health conditions.

A key line of questioning will be: How do women’s movement practices from running, swimming, gardening, online fitness classes, walking in a local park, in the native bush or on the beach - contribute to their understanding of wellbeing and connection before, during and after the pandemic?

The research builds on two pilot projects being led by Professor Thorpe investigating how women across the sport sector have responded to the pandemic, and another project exploring how women from different cultural backgrounds are understanding, defining, and managing wellbeing.

Professor Thorpe has already co-authored a book Feminist New Materialism, Sport and Fitness alongside Julie Brice and Marianne Clark, and she says the research will build on exciting new developments in feminist theory and methods.

“At the local level it will contribute to more complex ways of thinking about women’s wellbeing and what strategies and policies are needed to recognise the gendered effects of the pandemic and how we can better support women through this and out the other side of it."

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