The Cost of Caregiving: The Disproportionate and Invisible Impact of COVID-19 on Women

The COVID-19 pandemic had a global impact, altering how society and those within it function. While these changes affected almost everyone, there is evidence that women were disproportionately impacted. This reflexive thematic analysis included data gathered from parents, social work students, university faculty, and school board professionals (n = 113) from 2020 to 2023. We explored the experiences of female-identified parents and caregivers during COVID-19. The findings underscore the intense but often invisible burden that women, specifically mothers and caregivers, experienced throughout the pandemic. We found that women experienced acute stress in the realms of paid and unpaid labour, childcare, children's academics, and family mental health. Implications include a call to acknowledge this disproportionate impact and its consequences for gender equity, a recognition of the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on children, youth, families, and women, a recognition of the invisible labour that often falls upon women, and the implementation of critical methodologies in social work education and research to foster the use of such approaches within the field.