The social isolation measures ordered by the governments as a way of dealing with the health issue have disrupted the usual ways of organizing work and have revealed all the pressure that exists on women’s work and the enormous precariousness of multiple situations. At a general level, although both women and men are facing greater physical and emotional problems as a result of the pandemic and the related measures to address it, everything seems to indicate that this situation is having a greater impact on women (Farre et al., 2020; Castellano-Torres et al., 2020). According to data from the Intermón Oxfam study (2020), almost half of the women surveyed stated that they felt higher levels of anxiety, depression, work overload, isolation or physical illnesses due to the greater volume of unpaid domestic and care work that falls on them. them since the pandemic began.
From this perspective, and from the perspective of public policy management, care is an adjustment variable and the sexual division of labor in the gender segmentation of the labor market have supported government measures to manage the pandemic (CEPAL , 2020). As a consequence, women are the main losers in terms of their participation in the labor market and their overrepresentation in unemployment. In addition to being more present in the sectors most affected by the crisis (domestic employment, health activities and the residential care sector, commerce, tourism and the manufacturing industry), they are the first to withdraw from the labor market to meet care needs with greater exposure to poverty and lack of economic autonomy.