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Abstract Women may experience lower rates of entry and success into certain academic and professional spaces because of their observations that their work contributions are less valued than men's. We introducesense of matteringas a mechanism that may help explain women's underrepresentation in male‐dominated fields and leadership roles, distinguish it from related constructs, and advance a theoretical framework for how sense of mattering may shape gender disparities. Women's professional contributions are often undervalued, and women perceive and anticipate this unfair disadvantage, which may in turn limit their success, retention, and representation in stereotypically masculine spaces and roles. Attending to sense of mattering has the potential to improve upon past attempts to reduce gender disparities by emphasizing the importance of increasing the extent to which women's contributions are recognized and valued. 

Using data from 15 countries, this article investigates whether descriptive and prescriptive gender norms concerning housework and child care (domestic work) changed after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results of a total of 8,343 participants ( M = 19.95, SD = 1.68) from two comparable student samples suggest that descriptive norms about unpaid domestic work have been affected by the pandemic, with individuals seeing mothers’ relative to fathers’ share of housework and child care as even larger. Moderation analyses revealed that the effect of the pandemic on descriptive norms about child care decreased with countries’ increasing levels of gender equality; countries with stronger gender inequality showed a larger difference between pre- and post-pandemic. This study documents a shift in descriptive norms and discusses implications for gender equality—emphasizing the importance of addressing the additional challenges that mothers face during health-related crises.