A Multifaceted Scenario of Housewives' Challenges during Coronavirus Outbreak: A Case Study of Housewives Aged over 20 Years in Boroujerd City

The spread of corona virus is an unprecedented challenge in the human world. Corona crisis, first of all, suspended the current and normal routines of life and stopped the interpersonal relations of human beings and social institutions. The lack of accurate knowledge of this virus and its consequences in the human world has led to a complex situation and the possibility of its continuation has given us the idea of an uncertain future. The epidemic has been so rapid that social, economic, educational, and political institutions have not been able to properly deal with the new phenomenon; it has been an issue that has caused confusion among them. Under such circumstances, suspension of the society in an epidemic, or more precisely a pandemic, has led to a situation that has shocked all aspects and infrastructures of social life. Thus, serious rethinking in all aspects of individual and social life is required. Undoubtedly, one of the large groups that have experienced very different conditions during this period has been the group of "housewives". "She is a woman, who does housework," says Anne Oakley in her definition of a housewife. The combination of "woman" and "home" in one phrase creates a connection between femininity, marriage, and family residence. Therefore, the role of a housewife is a family or rather a female role. She also has an internship role. A study of domestic work is necessarily a study of women’s status and roles. Such a multiple and at the same time personal role may seem to negate the conventional definitions of the word "role". In a woman's social image, her role as a wife and mother is inseparable from that of a housewife. Housekeeping is a manifestation of the division of labor by gender, according to which men and women are expected to engage only in a specific category of work that is predetermined and not discrete at the individual level. In this division, women are considered responsible for household chores and raising children, which involve a low-income job. As a result, they are financially dependent on men and do not have access to their own money. Accordingly, the present study sought to answer the following questions based on the data analysis of the dimensions of this process of change and transformation: 1) What challenges have housewives faced with the outbreak of coronavirus disease?; 2) What strategies have they taken in facing the challenges and what factors have influenced their strategies?; 3) What are the consequences of the strategies they have adopted? 

The research method was based on the Grounded Theory (GT) considering its qualitative nature. In this method, the concepts and categories are extracted from interviews and presented in a paradigm model during the 3 stages of open, central, and selective coding. In the present study, the open coding stage was followed until the discovery of the main classes after transcribing each interview into text. This research was conducted on the population of housewives aged over 20 years in Boroujerd City in 2022. 

In response to the question of what challenges the housewives had faced with the outbreak of coronavirus disease, the results showed that they had been forced to play several simultaneous roles at home and under the banner of role more frequently than before due to the causal conditions resulted from this outbreak. In other words, they had faced a challenge called "increasing role multiplicity", which revealed the subject under study as the central phenomenon during the process of coding and analysis. The causal conditions that had given rise to the phenomenon of "increasing role multiplicity" included the mechanisms of prevention (housewife), care (mother), assistance (spouse), education (teacher and student), treatment (nurse), and telecommuting (employee). 2) In response to the second question, the actors had adopted the action of "changing the role of housewife" as a result of the phenomenon of "increasing role multiplicity". This change was in the form of one of the three types of housekeeping as monitoring, a challenge, and a compromise. The concept of "housewife" means a strategy through a monitoring method. In this research, the housewives were found to have tried to fulfill all the plans with all-round management at the same time as multiplicity correctly and with the least conflict. The concept of "housewife" referred to the reaction of a group of housewives, who had not been able to cope well with the challenges posed by the outbreak of coronavirus and as a result, this challenging situation had caused many tensions and conflicts for the households. They had  a family of their own, but had not only been unable to manage the situation, but also had difficulty in performing their previous roles and thus felt a double burden. The concept of "housewife" also referred to the reaction of housewives, who had tried to overcome the problems caused by the outbreak of the mentioned disease with the cooperation and assistance of other family members. Although this group of women was not as empowered as the group of housewives, it was not helpless as the latter group, thus being involved in the middle situation. They had tried to manage the already changed affairs of home and family to some extent by asking for help from other family members. Two groups of conditions had influenced the types of strategies adopted by the actors: a) The underlying condition that was seemingly unrelated to the strategies but acted as a platform for their adoption based on the prevalence rate of coronavirus disease. This condition was influenced by the demographic characteristics of age, education, marital status, occupation, number, sex, children’s age and education, spouse’s occupation, and family income and expenses; and b) Interventional condition that acted as a mediator and facilitated or limited strategy adoption. This condition included the psychological characteristics of gender socialization, cyber skills, social support, and government support (empowerment).
3) In response to what consequences resulted from the strategies they had adopted, we should say that the actors had experienced different consequences depending on what kinds of strategies they had adopted. For example, those who had adopted the role of housewife as monitoring and adaptive strategies had seen a positive outcome called "gender empowerment," which included increased self-confidence in the individual dimension and group dynamics and prevalence control in the collective dimension. However, the actors who had adopted housekeeping as a challenge (house-to-house) strategy had experienced the negative consequences of "gender disability", which included psychological stress and depression in the individual dimension and family tension in the collective dimension.