“It's that feeling that you can't get away”: Motherhood, gender inequality, and the stress process during extreme events

The impacts of extreme events and the distress they cause can be exacerbated by systemic inequalities. Dominant frameworks in disaster research focus either on the effects of social determinants of health or on the prevalence of mental health disorders. We argue that a social psychological lens can overcome limitations of existing frameworks by mapping the microprocesses through which distress proliferates within particular social environments during extreme events. To illustrate our point, we focused on mothers with young children in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, a qualitative interview study (N=15) showed that stressors stemming from participants’ workplaces, partners, children’s behaviours, and homeschooling severely affected their sense of self and quality of life. Participants however utilised individual, interpersonal, and collective forms of coping. Second, survey data (N=621) showed that stressors were associated with increased perceived stress and were mediated by role overload. Community identification was associated with reduced overload and perceived stress but did not diminish the effects of stressors. Overall, our analysis shows that gender inequality affects women during extreme events through institutionalised roles, tasks, and social relations, highlighting the microprocesses of how distress proliferates during extreme events.