'As we write this editorial, the COVID-19 pandemic is entering its third month. Our everyday lives have drastically changed, requiring us to come to grips with this new normal. In seeking to make sense of the tragedy and immense scale of this global health crisis, parallels have been drawn to other pandemics, particularly the 1919 Spanish flu, which in Australia killed an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 people.1 As feminist historians, we are especially interested in the gendered dimensions of pandemics past and present, including how they have impacted women. There is relatively little research on the gendered effects of the 1919 Spanish flu. We do know, however, that nurses, like those on the frontline today, would have been at higher risk of infection. The responsibility to entertain children, at home due to school closures, also fell entirely on women. Moreover, war widows or those with husbands still overseas who became ill were still expected to carry out their caregiving roles.2 Almost exactly a century later, the context in which COVID-19 is occurring is vastly different; but there are similarities. Opinion pieces proclaim that its flow-on effects have left women ‘anxious, overworked [and] insecure’ and that lockdowns are a ‘disaster for feminism’ as they have placed the burden on women to balance full-time employment with home-schooling and domestic chores.3 Household isolation has also led to a worldwide increase in domestic violence, prompting the United Nations to urge governments to ‘prevent and redress’ violence against women in their pandemic response plans.4 More broadly, it has warned that as a result of COVID-19 and its associated economic impact, ‘even the limited gains [towards gender equality] made in the past decades are at risk of being rolled back’.' (Rachel Harris and Michelle Staff, The Importance of Feminist History in a Global Pandemic : Editorial introduction)
