AustLit

On 31 December 2019 the World Health Organisation China Office was informed of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology in Wuhan, a city of 10m people, 700 km inland from Shanghai. The disease was named COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 on 11 February, after the first case in Australia was notified in Melbourne on 25 January. Within a few months, major shifts in everyday life would occur, for people around the world. Thousands, and then millions, and then hundreds of millions of people were pushed back into the home—entire populations where lockdowns were declared, and these meant that many jobs were lost or had an uncertain future continuation. Women were disproportionally represented in this group and, because of still-prevalent ideations of a male breadwinner for the household and of female roles in the home, far fewer women than men have returned to work outside it. In addition, in many paid occupations, "working from home" (when it could be done with phone and computer technology) became very widespread—and it has persisted for many people for all of their paid work time, or some of that time, even when returning to the office was possible, or encouraged. Many people in Australia declared that they preferred this, at least for some days of the week, because it removed the time spent travelling to the workplace or getting offspring to childcare —and many businesses were keen to reduce or even eliminate their office space. They perceived this as saving money, as did the workers in relation to the cost of travel or, quite often, of childcare (and this also led to job losses in that female-dominated sector). ' (Carole Ferrier , Editorial introduction)