By Pooja Nair B (Research Assistant)
on behalf of the COVID-19 Research Team at NUS
A focal point of our research in Singapore constitutes a study of 28 Singaporean families from a diverse range of socio-economic backgrounds. We have been conducting interviews and regular follow-ups via messaging applications like WhatsApp to document the everyday lives of individuals and families, and to understand their experiences living through COVID-19. Specifically, we explore how the pandemic and its ramifications have altered their work life, family life and their mental/emotional well-being.
Singapore’s Response to Covid-19
The Government implemented a Circuit Breaker (CB) for a period of close to 2 months, from April 7 till June 1st. The term ‘circuit breaker’ was carefully curated by the government to impose strict measures in order to “help reduce the risk of a big outbreak occurring”, “pre-empt escalating infections” and break the transmissions within the community whilst allowing essential services to continue (Lee, 2020). During this period, it also passed the Covid-19 (Temporary Measures) Bill in Parliament, which prohibited social gatherings of all sizes in both public and private spaces (Mohan, 2020). Residents were essentially only allowed to leave their homes if they worked in the essential services sectors, or to buy groceries or to exercise.
Our oldest respondent, 90-year old Mdm Epek with her kitten, her sole companion during the CB period. Despite the pandemic gloom, she remained resilient and was optimistic that things would soon be normal enough for her to meet her exercise buddies at the nearby community centre.
Photo by NUS Covid-19 Research Team.
All non-essential retail stores and services were closed, and dining in at restaurants was not permitted, heavily restricting the movement of individuals. Under this bill, the wearing of face masks was made compulsory for all residents in Singapore, with “exemptions for those engaging in strenuous exercise and children below the age of two” (Tay, 2020). Excluding essential services and key economic sectors, most workplaces were closed, and students shifted to a full, home-based learning.
Images of closed retail shops and empty hawker centres during the CB period.
Photos by Nuria Ling, TODAY [left] and Lydia Lam, Channel News Asia [right].
With the end of the CB, Singapore has been gradually reopening its economy in 3 phases, moving from Phase 1 to 2 and to 3 gradually. Currently, we are in Phase 2, whereby social gatherings and dining in at restaurants of up to 5 people are allowed. Physical lessons have resumed at schools, while work-from-home (WFH) arrangements have continued to be encouraged as far as possible. While the “multi-ministry task force [set up to manage Covid-19] is working on a roadmap towards Phase 3”, Singapore has been mindful that the number of cases in other parts of the world are still on the rise (Co, 2020).
Finally, to aid with contact tracing, a national digital check-in system, SafeEntry, has been put in place whereby individuals are required to scan a QR code or their identification cards before entering and leaving public venues and workplaces. In September 2020, TraceTogether tokens, a small device that expedites contact tracing through tracking the locations individuals have visited, have become available for collection nationwide (Lim, 2020).
Blurring of personal and professional lives
Based on our initial interviews, a prevalent idea addressed by many respondents who were working was that they had become significantly busier as a result of the new WFH structure coupled with unpaid household labour and duties.
Some respondents admitted to not knowing when they should stop working and were in fact working past their stipulated hours:
“[The] first few weeks [were] terrible, because you just don’t know when to stop work. So, it’s like you’re working and working and working and you get really exhausted…so I realized that you [have] to be disciplined about putting in place some time to take a break.”
This was exacerbated when respondents were unable to draw the line between their personal lives and work lives as they were working at home.
Such WFH arrangements have dismantled “temporal and geographical barriers that separate home and work roles” and the public sphere from the private sphere (Ford, 2011). Typically, work is presumed to happen within the public sphere whilst the home, the private sphere, is considered a space for leisure. However, as Ford’s (2011) work asserts, the relationship between the public and private is no longer dichotomous; “public and private are… enmeshed. They are continually renegotiated and redefined, always in relation to one another”. The WFH system has brought into close contact these different aspects of individuals’ lives such that the lines between what is ‘public’ and ‘private’ has become ambiguous. As such, navigating through these spatial boundaries has demonstrably been a challenge for many respondents.
In order to address this issue, one respondent shared the following strategy:
“I’ve always told my husband that the bedroom is for sleeping… and we don’t have a work station or anything in the bedroom… anything educational or work-related always happens in a communal space… it actually helped because when you step into your room, it kind of creates that boundary between your work space and your home space… [because] now… your work is inside your home, so you need to have some kind of boundary there.”
Furthermore, a number of respondents highlighted that their work arrangements had become ‘more flexible’ such that they could take breaks during the day, to engage in household chores for instance or spending time with their children, if there were no meetings scheduled or no urgent deadlines to be met.
For instance, one informant acknowledged:
“I can do [my work] later in the evening or night, so sometimes I just play with the kids in the meantime… if there’s no meeting.”
As such, performing other responsibilities such as care ‘work’, house work and even recreational work within the household during the working day, all seem to have contributed to the ‘longer’ working hours experienced by informants. Clearly, even when they were not working on their ‘regular jobs’ many were still preoccupied with parenting and household duties; this was less apparent in the cases of individuals who had employed foreign domestic workers (FDWs), who were charged with doing household chores.
When asked about the challenges she faced in terms of working from home, one mother explained:
“My work is definitely affected because with the kids around, I cannot do my work… [one challenge is] obviously getting the work done, because when you’re at home, [there are] distraction[s] from everyone else and the space is very limited… you’re disrupted with other things, cooking and this, and that, so efficiency is not as good… because I have young kids around… you have to [juggle] working at home.”
Gendered roles and spaces
Whilst the overall caregiving and household responsibilities had increased for all during the CB period, we gathered from our interviews that conventional gendered division of labour persists within nuclear family households, where both parents were working. Often, the fathers would engage in playing and having fun with the kids when they had time off work whereas the mothers were focused on their schoolwork and home-based learning (HBL) and had to keep an eye on them even while doing their own non-home-based work. A relatively common response from women was that their spouses were usually busier with work; one working mother shared how “[her husband] will play with them… whenever he’s free”. As opposed to the women who had to juggle between work and caregiving, the men seemed to engage with the children when they “had the time” or during break periods - despite also being at home during the course of the CB.
Photo by Desmond Foo, The Straits Times.
This then seems to reinstate “the existing gender stratification system that [relegates] women to the private sphere” (Spain, 1992). The stay-at-home period during the CB highlights and exposes that the home remains a gendered space where women are expected to perform duties as mother, wife even as they continue with their outside jobs and somehow achieve some balance between these two, whereas men could still predominantly focus on their day job and ‘help out’ with the kids if there is time left over and they are ‘available.’ Yet, surprisingly, many mothers did not express any concerns vis-à-vis the division of responsibilities with their husbands in terms of childcare; rather, they were mostly supportive and understanding of their spouse’s work schedules although they had their own jobs to perform as well.
One respondent expressed:
“I think my husband is not used to… dealing with domestic life and dealing with work in the same environment. I think that’s stressful… my helper does more of the chores, I do more of the parenting… or the teaching and stuff like that.”
The women’s acceptance of these circumstances and situations as in this instance also allows us to recognize how “gendered spaces themselves shape, and are shaped by daily activities” and compels us to rethink the meanings ascribed to ‘public’ and ‘private’ spaces (Spain, 1992).
References
Co, C. (2020, October 5). Government working towards Phase 3, but Singapore will remain in DORSCON Orange ‘for the time being’: Gan Kim Yong . Retrieved from Channel News Asia: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/government-working-towards-phase-3-covid-19-dorscon-orange-13202618
Ford, S. M. (2011). RECONCEPTUALIZING THE PUBLIC/PRIVATE DISTINCTION IN THE AGE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY . Information, Communication & Society, 14(4), 550-567.
Lee, H. L. (2020, April 3). PM Lee: the COVID-19 situation in Singapore (3 Apr) . Retrieved from Government of Singapore: https://www.gov.sg/article/pm-lee-hsien-loong-on-the-covid-19-situation-in-singapore-3-apr
Lim, J. (2020, September 10). How to collect your free TraceTogether token: 5 things to know about the device . Retrieved from The Straits Times: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/how-to-collect-your-free-tracetogether-token-5-things-to-know-about-the-device
Mohan, M. (2020, April 7). COVID-19: Social gatherings of any size in both private and public spaces prohibited under new Bill . Retrieved from Channel News Asia: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/covid-19-social-gatherings-private-and-public-moh-12617800
Tay, T. F. (2020, April 14). Coronavirus: Mandatory for all in Singapore to wear mask when out, except for kids under 2 and those doing strenuous exercise . Retrieved from The Straits Times: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/coronavirus-mandatory-for-all-to-wear-a-mask-when-out-with-exceptions-for-kids-under-2-and
Spain, D. (1992). Gendered Spaces. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press.