It’s been a tough 11 months for mothers. For about a millisecond after the onset of the pandemic, I hoped that remote work would cause fathers to finally see all of the myriad household tasks mothers do every day and begin doing their fair share. It didn’t happen.

Instead of curing the fairness gap, we got the Great COVID Cop-out.

Nearly 80% of mothers have been primarily responsible for doing the housework since March, while 66% are chiefly responsible for the child care among partnered parents. When you look at home schooling, parents’ contributions are even more skewed. Three-quarters of mothers reported spending more time on it; only one-third of dads do. (All numbers are from a new study by sociologists Allison Dunatchik, Kathleen Gerson, Jennifer Glass, Jerry A. Jacobs and Haley Stritzel in Gender & Society, forthcoming in April.)

The fairness gap is deeply ingrained in our assumptions about family life, a fact that is particularly clear in the stories we tell. Three common themes show up in even the most sophisticated Hollywood productions.

The first theme, Magic Disappearing Children, appears in the TV show “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” an otherwise-feminist saga about a separated and then divorced mother of two children making her way as a comedian in the late 1950s. At first, she and the kids move in with her parents, who have a housekeeper — automatic help at home. By season three, there’d been a few references to her ex taking charge, but mostly the kids just magically disappear. Convenient, that.

The second theme is the Prodigal Dad. Consider “Bosch,” the TV version of Michael Connelly’s fictional LAPD detective. Mr. Old-School Tough Guy has a daughter, but he’s been gone from her life until her teens. She doesn’t hold it against him, though. In fact, she prefers him to her mom, and neither mother nor daughter appears to have the tiniest iota of resentment about his absence from the everyday responsibilities of bringing up baby.

The third theme is Mom Doesn’t Mind. In “Blackish,” Dre Johnson decides he doesn’t do enough around the house, and we are invited to be amused at the antics and improbability of a man actually trying to do his fair share. But he is inept, alas, and the episode ends with everybody recognizing that really, Mom does it better. “I actually miss doing all the little things,” says his wife. As in, I prefer doing dishes while you play video games?

The fairness gap isn’t “just the way it is.” It’s about economics, and who benefits from a system we tolerate.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 140,000 jobs lost in December, but the news was even more grim for women: They lost 156,000 jobs, men gained 16,000. As unemployment increased throughout 2020, women lost a million more jobs than men did.

. I just want all women — and all men — to have better choices.

We can begin by acknowledging what’s happening to mothers — and much less so to fathers — during the pandemic and beyond it. And we can change the stories we tell. Just as GLAAD worked to call out casual homophobia in Hollywood (and offer producers new scripts), we can organize to end casual sexism as well.

Finding less-outdated themes for our stories is not impossible. In “Cobra Kai,” the father’s pre-COVID cop-out resulted in strained relationships with his kids. How hard was that?

Joan C. Williams is a professor and founding director of the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings School of Law. She is the author of “Bias Interrupted,” scheduled for publication in 2022.  2021 the Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.