Willie Mae Daniels looks at videos with her granddaughter, Karyah Davis, in Miami, Florida, on March 26. Daniels was laid off from her job as a food service cashier at the University of Miami on March 17. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Women are facing unprecedented challenges in the job market — and at home.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, Eleanore Fernandez worked as an executive assistant at a company that catered healthy snacks for Silicon Valley offices.

The company “was about to ramp up and go bigger,” Fernandez said, but in March, all the offices in the area closed. No one was buying snacks. So the founder decided to lay off 400 employees, Fernandez included.

Now, she spends her days applying to new jobs while home-schooling her 12-year-old daughter, whose school closed a week before others in California because a student there tested positive for