Caregiving Task Force Cited in Green Bay Press Gazette

GB Gazette photo

Amanda Lawniczak and her children, Logan, 3, and Nora, 5, pose at Green Bay Packers Titletown District on Saturday in Ashwaubenon. Sarah Kloepping/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

In a piece called “Labor Day: Caregivers in the home are taking on more work, new obligations due to the pandemic,” the Caregiving Task Force, including WGSC Director Stephanie Rytilahti and WGSC Board Member Women and Science Program Director Jenny Schuttlefield-Christus, have been cited in a piece published the Green Bay Press Gazette.

The pandemic has shifted the work of taking care of individuals such as children or the elderly to family members, as outside resources are less available. Due to long-standing social roles and expectations, it has compounded an already existing trend: women disproportionately are caregiving and managing the household.

Stephanie Rytilahti, who directs the University of Wisconsin’s Women and Gender Studies Consortium, says the shift in caregiving work is fundamentally a gender equity issue.

Rytilahti said this shift in “invisible labor” is creating a crisis in which caregivers, who are chiefly women, are taking care of household members sometimes with little to no support through the pandemic.
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