1 Introduction
The division of unpaid work between men and women has long been a central theme of scholarly work on gender inequalities and with very good reasons.1 Household duties and caring for family members were considered female territories in the past and the underlying gender norms as well as the actual practice have changed surprisingly little considering the massive changes in other spheres of life. Despite their active participation in the labour market, women still shoulder most of the domestic labour and their home responsibilities continue to be a major factor behind their labour market disadvantages.2
One of the most immediate and profound social consequences of the covid-19 crisis hit exactly this area of persistent gender inequalities: the sphere of domestic work. With social distancing measures forcing a large part of the population – children included – to carry out their daily activities in their homes, the amount of domestic work was bound to expand and family life to be reorganised. It was expected that the change would be most marked in households with (younger) children, where institutional care and education needed to be replaced by parental effort. Consideration of these disruptions led to two parallel predictions concerning the crisis’ longer-term impact on gender equality. The stronger, pessimistic argument warned about the possible implications of women continuing to do the major part of the excessive household duties during lockdowns, while the second, optimistic suggestion
From the beginning it was expected that women would continue to undertake the major share of the potentially excessive workload, both childcare and chores. This assumption was to a large extent based on pre-covid research evidence on how households organise their duties in normal times and on how prevailing gender norms and the labour market status of men and women reinforce the gendered allocation of work in the household. From this scenario a major risk follows: the massive household burden might jeopardise women’s employment prospects, both in the short and in the long run, thus further widening the gender gap in employment.
At the same time, however, a carefully phrased positive scenario also appeared. Once again based on pre-covid knowledge, scholars expected that also men would substantially increase the time they spent on household duties – even if they remained the secondary care providers in the vast majority of households. If such a behavioural change were to take place, it could then generate a shift towards a somewhat more equal division of tasks as well as more egalitarian gender norms that could persist in the longer term.
While “predictions” and “speculations” at the time, one year later we are already in a (somewhat) better position to re-examine these early scenario in the light of new evidence collected during the first year of the pandemic. This chapter brings together pre-covid research evidence and early-covid predictions and compares them with empirical research findings on the gendered division of unpaid labour from the first pandemic lockdown period in Europe. Our review of the available evidence shows that covid-19 studies tend to support, albeit not (yet) fully confirm the early hypotheses. The lockdown situation did indeed force women, particularly mothers, into balancing a heavy workload – both paid and unpaid. But, at the same time, many men increased their involvement in household duties to unprecedented levels. After describing these main tendencies, we move on to the two more complex questions and discuss the possible consequences of these substantial changes. First, we look at the possible labour market effects of women’s increased household burden, considering both the short- and the long-term consequences. We then discuss the possibility of a shift towards more egalitarian gender norms; that
Our discussion is limited to Europe4, a – relatively – homogenous set of countries. Unfortunately, data is still too limited to allow an in-depth and full exploration, let alone to enable us to understand cross-country differences within Europe. The existence of such differences, however, is more than likely given the variations in the cultural- and institutional conditions. Nevertheless, keeping such a focus also helps to call attention to the need to avoid automatically applying findings from other contexts to Europe – using them instead to cross-fertilise European investigations. Finally, notwithstanding the heterogeneity across countries, most European societies are still among the highest achievers in gender equality globally. Due to path-dependence,5 it is very likely that whatever negative impact the crisis has on gender equality in Europe, it is still relatively moderate when compared to the global situation.
The aim of this chapter is to provide a first assessment, and not a complete review with definitive answers to the questions raised. This is due both to the long-term nature of these questions and to the limitations of data availability. First, more than a year since the pandemic started, the situation is still evolving and measures, including those that are important from a gender perspective, are still in effect in most European countries. Second, data and research evidence is also limited even many months on from the start of the pandemic. In some areas, available evidence remains scattered and certain details of the underlying mechanisms might never be measured. This is because research and data collection are time-consuming and costly processes and (understandably) the research sector could not keep pace with the speed of the changes and collect evidence on all the relevant aspects.
Importantly, we do not have internationally comparable real-time data on how household members spent their time in lockdown, and most probably never will.6 Still we are very fortunate to have such data from several European
2 Amount: a Heavily Increased Workload in the Households
The change that covid-19 wrought on homes and families all over the world is massive and unprecedented. From a place that primarily served as a site for recreation and private life, households were transformed into an environment with multiple functions where adults and children alike spent the greater part of their days for several weeks or even months in 2020 and early 2021. The changes were driven by some widely applied confinement measures: mainly the physical closure of schools and childcare institutions but also by teleworking and social distancing measures that reduced the mobility of people between households.
By far the most significant change in the amount of unpaid work occurred in households with children and in periods when schools and childcare institutions were closed. During these times, younger children required full-time care to be provided at home while school-age children needed support with distance learning. Without school-meals provided, regular meal-preparation was needed and also additional household chores could appear. At the same time, stay-at-home requirements also limited access to external help. Grandparental help – a major childcare and sometimes housework support
A rapid shift to teleworking for many could also have had some impact on the workload in the household by increasing the demand for food consumed at home and possibly also for cleaning and small maintenance tasks. However, working from home was also key to meeting the increased demand for care provision when children had to stay at home. The Eurofound’s Living, working and covid-19 online survey survey suggests that in April 2020, 39% and in June up to 48% of European employees were working from home10 – a massive and rapid increase from 2019 when only 5.4% of EU-27 employees “usually” worked from their homes.11
Consequently, parents have been facing a constantly and often unpredictably changing demand for care, home schooling and household work. The extent of this increase is likely to vary significantly by household type, demographic and other individual circumstances, as well as by country. Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, no cross-country research was carried out to document what was happening in the households across the European countries. At the same time a set of national studies are available from the first lockdown period to explore these issues. These provide important, albeit not fully comparable, insights into the extent of this increase and its consequences.12 Several of these
The various studies used different approaches to differentiate by children’s age, but there is little doubt that the biggest additional burden had to be shouldered in households with children of primary school age and younger. In Italy, for example, parents with a primary school-age child were twice as likely to report an increase in the time devoted to childcare than parents of lower secondary age children.19 Distinguishing further among the youngest children, a German study found the increase in time spent on childcare to be the greatest among parents with children aged 3–5 years20 and a Spanish survey21 identified parents with children aged under 5 years as those who had to increase the time spent on childcare most significantly.
Thus, available evidence makes it clear that the crisis-enforced increase of unpaid work – especially childcare and home schooling – was significant and affected many families in Europe. Furthermore, in most countries it did so for prolonged periods during the first year of the pandemic. According to data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the number of weeks during which schools were closed across the entire country due to the pandemic up to 28 February 2021 added up to only 3 weeks in Denmark but reached 16–19 weeks in Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech Republic.24 In most countries, there was more than one period of closure, responding to the various waves of the virus. Beyond the full, national school closures, additional regional or local measures for distance teaching were introduced, while individual institutions or classes were sometimes also quarantined to stop the spread of the virus. Moreover, confinement measures also curtailed children’s extra-curricular activities. This meant that services that would usually help parents to keep children active after school and during school breaks became unavailable. All these conditions made the excessive workload measured during the first lockdowns a reality for a large part of the first pandemic year for millions of families across Europe.
3 Allocation: Women Doing the Lion’s Share – but also a Real Shock for Men
Long before any new data appeared, there was little doubt that women would continue to bear most of the increased unpaid workload.25 This was a logical
The lockdown surveys reviewed here uniformly confirm that women on average were doing substantially more care and housework during the crisis than men did, so the allocation of work remained highly unbalanced even in this period of extreme unpaid workloads. While men also increased their contributions, the size of the absolute gap between males and females grew larger when compared to pre-covid times. Based on the surveys measuring hours spent on different activities we can calculate that, during an average lockdown week, women were engaged in childcare for 12 to 19 hours longer than men,28 or even more.29 These estimated time gaps are either comparable to – or notably bigger than they were in pre-covid times, depending on the study we look at.
Moreover, studies also agree that, at most, a small proportion of this gap can be explained by the employment situation of the partners. Overall, women’s childcare (and household) involvement was less dependent on their employment situation than men’s.30 Consequently, mothers who continued doing paid work during the lockdowns had to bear particularly heavy loads. In Germany, for example, even the incidence of exclusive maternal care remained unchanged also when mothers did more hours of paid work than before the pandemic.31
It is less clear how mothers in the various working situations differed in their responses to the crisis. In the UK, working mothers reported very similar numbers of additional childcare hours, irrespective of their place of employment, but they took on less extra childcare responsibilities than did
Together with the worryingly large increase in women’s burden, a substantial growth in paternal involvement as measured in actual hours was also reported. In fact, the results from several studies suggest that the average relative gender gap (e.g. calculated as men’s share of the overall parenting time) remained largely unchanged during the lockdown, implying a massive increase in fathers’ involvement too.35 The only study that also looked closely at housework even found an increase in the share of men’s contribution to that.36 In absolute terms, the surveys show that fathers on average increased their weekly contribution to childcare by at least 5–7 hours,37 but potentially up to around 18 hours or more38 depending on the country as well as on how exactly the contribution was measured.
Unlike mothers, fathers were most likely to react to the lockdown with an increased involvement in childcare if they found themselves without paid work. In the UK, both furloughed and non-working fathers did several hours more childcare per week than either teleworking or workplace-based men39 and similar patterns were found in Hungary.40 To a lesser extent, men also adjusted to their partners’ employment situation. Italian men were more likely to increase their involvement in childcare if their partner was working either from home or at the workplace.41 Men in Spain were also more likely to adapt to their partners’ status than women did.42
There is little doubt that many details of households’ adjustment to the crisis remain hidden and, although likely, cross-country variations have not been studied. However, the case studies already provide strong evidence on some
4 The Aftermath
4.1 Could Women’s Employment be Affected?
The massive unpaid workload mothers had to shoulder during the pandemic is in itself a cause for concern, as it is most likely to have had adverse effects on their wellbeing.43 But it is also feared that it will negatively affect their employment prospects both in the short and the longer run and thus widen the gender gap in the labour market. It has been widely suggested that this de-equalising effect would come on top of another main trend that put women in a particularly vulnerable labour market position in this crisis, which is the typically female occupations’ and economic sectors’ greater susceptibility to furloughs and dismissals.44 While the consequences of pre-existing gender segregation in the labour market constitute an important gender aspect of the crisis, we continue to focus here on unpaid work and on trying to understand whether women’s employment prospects can indeed be further affected by their increased workload in the household.
To answer this question, we look first at some related discussions and research findings from the USA, where the concerns about some very direct gender impacts of the crisis were first raised. In particular, Alon and his colleagues45 suggested very early on that women might respond to their increased
Immediately quitting the labour market, however, is not the only way in which employment of women can be affected by their caring responsibilities. To accommodate the family’s needs, women can also reduce their work hours while remaining in employment. This is possible either by taking various forms of paid and unpaid leave or by reducing the number of working hours in other ways. Cumulatively, such disruptions might result in skill losses leading to reduced wages and more limited career prospects in the longer run, creating a loss similar to the motherhood penalty – a well-known consequence of taking maternal leave or reducing working hours to care for young children even in “normal” times.47 Thus, covid-19-induced work-time reduction could take its toll later on, contributing to long-term increases in gender inequality by increasing both the employment gap and the gender pay gap.
US data confirms predictions that the present crisis is very different from earlier ones in having a more negative impact on women’s than on men’s employment.48 Moreover, a growing body of US evidence suggests that the reduction in women’s presence in the labour market is at least partially attributable to their growing care responsibilities. Researchers calculate that opening schools earlier rather than later and thus relieving women of the additional burden of home education and making it possible for them to re-enter the labour market, could help to avoid a large part of their recession-induced relative skill losses. This could also substantially mitigate the expected covid-induced increase in the gender wage-gap.49 In a US study from May to June 2020, 13% of the working parents surveyed reported having lost their job or having reduced their working hours due to lack of childcare. Among those who lost their jobs, a quarter of the women, but only an eighth of the men, cited lack of childcare
In Europe, the overall gender balance of the crisis in the labour market is not yet fully clear. Not only are the consequences still unfolding, the tendencies also vary across countries as changes appear at a very different pace, depending both on the spread of the virus and the particular national policies applied to mitigate the effects. Overall, the initial shock seemed to have hit women harder. Across the 27 EU Member States, the overall number of working hours as well as the level of employment declined more sharply for women than for men in the first half of 2020 according to Eurostat.52 Looking at the first three-quarters of 2020, the European Institute for Gender Equality (eige) also finds that the recovery is slower for women and suggests that this might indicate longer-lasting impacts for women than for men.53 Data from the last months of 2020, however, do not justify this concern. Instead, they show that, compared to one year earlier, men’s employment reduced more significantly both in relative and in absolute terms, with only a small number of countries displaying opposite tendencies.54
Even if the fear of an overall bigger employment loss for women remains unjustified, the question is valid: can we link any aspect of European women’s employment losses to their childcare responsibilities? Research on this topic so far is limited and inconclusive. Some evidence comes from detailed analyses of the UK lockdown surveys. In their analysis, Andrew and her colleagues55 control for occupation as well as the percentage of tasks that can be done at home. They test whether gender differences in these could explain women’s
It is, however, not only a loss in the quantity but also in the quality of working hours that can induce long-term deterioration in women’s labour market prospects, and lead to reduced productivity and relative skills losses. Andrew et al.57 provide a measure of uninterrupted working hours – that is the number of working hours when parents are not engaged in childcare while also working. They not only find that, compared to pre-covid times, the proportion of such working time reduced significantly for all parents, but also that mothers’ working hours were affected more than fathers’. Fathers spent 70% of their working time focusing solely on their paid work, while mothers spent only 53%.
More fragmented work patterns can lead to reduced productivity and thus to reduced wages.58 In fact, a gender gap in productivity related to the lockdowns has already been shown to exist for a particular group of workers: academics. In this labour market segment, productivity can be relatively accurately measured through the number of papers submitted to academic journals. A detailed study of manuscripts submitted to Elsevier between February and May 2020 shows that compared to males, female researchers – especially younger ones that are most likely to have childcare responsibilities – produced significantly fewer academic outputs in all the science areas. However, results for Europe are not distinguishable.59
4.2 A Shift towards More Egalitarian Gender Norms?
Discussions about gender equality after covid-19 are dominated by well-underpinned concerns, as discussed above. Still, there seems to be one ray of hope. This again is associated with the reallocation of unpaid work during these unusual times and suggests that the shock that led to men’s participation in household duties might provoke a persistent positive shift in gender norms, and make a more equal division of tasks more widely accepted and followed. This possibility too was raised before any new evidence became available60 and has been repeatedly discussed since.61 This section presents some of the underlying arguments and looks at the (limited) empirical evidence available so far.
In normal circumstances, gender norms and the actual division of unpaid work constitute the slowest changing dimensions of gender inequality.62 Gender attitudes and allocation of housework are, however, strongly inter-related and it is reasonable to expect that an external shock influencing one will generate a shift in the other. Research carried out before the covid-19 pandemic provides abundant evidence that men and women that have more egalitarian attitudes to gender roles are more likely to share domestic work more evenly. The association appears both directly, and indirectly, through the influence of their employment characteristics (number of work hours, earnings, etc.).63 Most studies, however, have assumed – but not systematically tested – that attitudes to gender roles precede, and thus shape, participation in unpaid
Additional relevant evidence comes from studies looking at the longer-term impact of non-transferable paternal leave schemes. Some (but not all) research on the effects of such measures show that a temporary, enforced move towards equalisation of childcare tasks can shape how couples share their duties even several years later. Across several countries, fathers that took up paternal leave were more likely to continue shouldering not only more of the childcare but also more housework responsibilities.65 The periods of paternal caregiving due to these leave schemes were two weeks to two months long. With the school closures due to covid-19 and thus the lockdown-enforced reorganisations of the work in households being a minimum of three weeks long across the European countries, it is reasonable to expect qualitatively similar outcomes in the long term.
Which types of households are the most likely to be affected? Looking at the various work-situation combinations of couples during the pandemic, we certainly see unusually large scope for moving towards a paternal caretaking model in several arrangements. Among couples with young children in Germany as many as 30% of the fathers had more flexible working arrangements than the mothers did.66 In the UK,67 15% of women with dependent children worked in a critical job and had a partner who stayed at home either teleworking or without a job. Of course, such situations do not directly lead to a more equal allocation of tasks let alone to reversed gender roles. Some studies, however, provide some – albeit subjective – indications as to the
Data clearly links the largest increase in fathers’ involvement in childcare to loss of their jobs71 – a pattern not unknown from pre-covid times.72 Even if women continued to take on a large part of the unpaid duties in these families too, and thus it would often be an exaggeration to speak of “reversed gender roles”,73 we can expect the most significant attitude changes to take place under these circumstances. Indeed, to the best of our knowledge, the only study that has so far tested the prediction that a non-traditional reallocation of tasks provoked more egalitarian gender norms during the lockdowns, found supportive evidence in the group of fathers that lost their jobs.74 The study covered Germany, the USA and Singapore between May and June 2020, and found that men who lived in a relationship became unemployed during the crisis reported significantly more egalitarian gender attitudes than other men did. Even though the research design does not allow for strong causality claims, it offers convincing evidence that losing paid activity during the lockdown could make men more open to the idea of equally shared responsibilities between men and women. Due to the reciprocal association between gender attitudes and involvement in domestic labour, this might well be a sign of longer-term changes in paternal behaviour.75
The aforementioned study found no comparable attitude shift among teleworking fathers. Still, there are good reasons to believe that not only the men who stopped working might have reconsidered their attitudes towards housework. Teleworking fathers in particular found themselves in a position (possibly for the first time in their lives) to closely observe the household and
In an optimistic scenario, fathers in their redefined roles can also become role models spreading the attitude shift still further, beyond their own families. While most of the household and care work takes place behind closed doors, some of the duties newly taken over by men are still visible and might initiate a shift in gender norms in the broader society. Examples include time men spent with their children in public places, but also doing the grocery shopping, which became a predominantly male activity in Spain during the lockdowns.79 Finally, we should not forget, that among teleworking men, who now have first-hand experience of both the ups and the downs of childcare and household work, there are also employers and managers well positioned to introduce changes in working cultures that have so far not offered much support for a good work–life balance.
5 Conclusion: Room for Research, Room for Intervention
This chapter brought together pre-covid research with new evidence from Europe to reflect upon some key aspects of the changes this crisis has induced in households. Estimates from national real-time surveys, albeit not fully comparable, indicate that parents spent a minimum of 25%, but possibly even 100% more hours on childcare and home schooling during the lockdowns than before, while also faced with an increased amount of housework. As school closures were recurring and often long-lasting episodes during the first year of the pandemic, the possible consequences for parents cannot be underestimated. Looking at the distribution of this heavy workload, research clearly confirms that the heaviest burden was taken up by mothers, particularly those with young children. Not only were they more likely to adjust to the situation by massively increasing the time spent on unpaid duties, but their involvement was to a large extent independent of their working situation. However, at the same time, fathers also became more involved, many of them taking up several
While these are important changes in themselves, the most interesting questions relate to the possible longer-term consequences of the lockdown-induced disruptions. Will mothers’ labour market prospects be damaged as a result of their heavy covid-19 burden? Will a more equal division of household tasks prevail and reshape gender norms at least in some parts of society? So far only limited research has been done to answer these questions for Europe, although some data is already available to illustrate what is happening and to help better formulate our questions for future research.
Not enough research was available to enable us to understand if women’s employment losses so far can, to some extent, be attributable to their increased family responsibilities. Therefore, we conclude that, in contrast to the USA, it is not (yet) possible to evaluate this assumption for Europe. There are, however, several indications that women’s and especially mothers’ number of uninterrupted working hours and productivity could have been badly affected – the possible labour market consequences of these will require continuous monitoring in the future. Regarding a potential shift in gender norms, we conclude that paternal involvement, especially in childcare activities, in some cases (particularly where the father had stopped working but also to some extent when they teleworked) became intense enough to raise hopes of a positive and persistent shift in the division of household labour as well as the related gender norms. Again, more studies will be needed to see if this is really happening.
How the situation eventually evolves and how gender relations will (or will not) be reshaped in Europe will also depend upon the institutional responses. National governments and employers have a great responsibility to help people to fit both paid and unpaid work into their lives and maintain an acceptable work–family balance during and beyond the pandemic. Flexible working arrangements and teleworking will most likely be an integrated part of the “new normal”.80 It is crucial, however, that they do not become a solution for female employees only: such arrangements need to be equally available but also acceptable for men. The positive shift away from the unequal distribution of labour that this crisis might have created will need to be reinforced by both public communication and other supportive measures.
The views expressed are purely those of the author and may not in any circumstance be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission. The author would like to thank to Beatrice D’Hombres for her support and helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. This manuscript was closed in May 2021.
E.g. Man Yee Kan et al., ‘Gender Convergence in Domestic Work: Discerning the Effects of Interactional and Institutional Barriers from Large-Scale Data’ (2011) 45 (2) Sociology 234.
United Nations, ‘The Impact of COVID-19 on Women’ (2020) Policy Brief; Titan Alon et al., ‘The Impact of COVID-19 on Gender Equality’ (2020) nber Working Paper No. 26947; Zsuzsa Blaskó et al., ‘How Will the COVID-19 Crisis Affect Existing Gender Divides in Europe?’ (2020) Publications Office of the European Union.
In this chapter by Europe, we mean the 27 Members States of the EU plus the United Kingdom.
World Economic Forum, ‘Global Gender Gap Report 2020’ <weforum.org> accessed 23 June 2021.
Eurofound’s Living, working and covid-19 online survey, although a rich and important resource in many regards, is unfortunately not very useful here. As it collected time use information in the second and not in the first wave of the survey, it only provides such data for the summer period when school closures were no longer key factors in shaping parental time use.
Gosta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Polity Press 1989); Gosta Esping-Andersen, Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies (oup 1999); Makiko Fuwa, ‘Macro-Level Gender Inequality and the Division of Household Labor in 22 Countries’ (2004) 69 American Sociological Review 751; Makiko Fuwa and Philip N Cohen, ‘Housework and Social Policy’ (2007) 36 Social Science Research 512; Tanja van der Lippe et al., ‘Persistent Inequalities in Time Use between Men and Women: a Detailed Look at the Influence of Economic Circumstances, Policies, and Culture’ (2011) 27 (2) European Sociological Review 164.
Unfortunately no comparable study from any Scandinavian regimes was found.
Across ten European countries, the percentage of parents that regularly used grandparental support to look after their children varied between 4% (Denmark and Sweden) and 25% (Greece). Data from the share study, 2004/05. Participating countries were Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Greece. Giorgio Di Gessa et al., ‘What Drives National Differences in Intensive Grandparental Childcare in Europe?’ (2016) 71 The Journals of Gerontology: Series B 141.
Eurofound, ‘Living, Working and COVID-19 – First Findings – April 2020’ (2020) Publications Office of the European Union; Eurofound, ‘COVID-19: Implications for Employment and Working Life’ (2021) Publications Office of the European Union.
Eurostat, ‘Database’ <europa.eu> accessed 29 November 2021.
This chapter mainly relies on findings from real-time national lockdown surveys in the UK (Alison Andrew et al., ‘How Are Mothers and Fathers Balancing Work and Family Under Lockdown?’ (2020) ifs Briefing Note bn290; Almudena Sevilla and Sarah Smith, ‘Baby Steps: The Gender Division of Childcare during the COVID-19 Pandemic’ (2020) 36 (S1) Oxford Review of Economic Policy S169); Spain (Lidia Farré et al., ‘How The COVID-19 Lockdown Affected the Gender Equality in Paid and Unpaid Work in Spain’ (2020) iza dp No. 13434); Hungary (Éva Fodor et al., ‘The Impact of COVID-19 on the Gender Division of Childcare Work in Hungary’ (2020) 23 (S1) European Societies S95); Germany (Michaela Kreyenfeld et al., ‘Coronavirus and Care: How the Coronavirus Crisis Affected Father’s Involvement in Germany’ (2021) 44 Demographic Research 99; Gundula Zoch et al., ‘Who Cares When Care Closes? Care-Arrangements and Parental Working Conditions during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany’ (2021) 23 (S1) European Societies S576; Lena Hipp and Mareike Bünnig, ‘Parenthood as a Driver of Increased Gender Inequality during COVID-19? Exploratory Evidence from Germany’ (2021) 23 (S1) European Societies S658); and the Netherlands (Mara Yerkes et al., ‘‘Intelligent’ Lockdown, Intelligent Effects? Results from a Survey on Gender (in)Equality in Paid Work, the Division of Childcare and Household Work, and Quality of Life among Parents in the Netherlands during the Covid-19 Lockdown’ (2020) 15 (11) PLoS One e0242249). Each of these real-time surveys were carried out in April–May 2020, during the first period of lockdown and school closure measures. They all used representative samples, either directly targeting the adult population with children in the household, or selecting such groups for some of the analyses. As the specification of the population studied as well as the modes of measurement varied, their findings are not directly comparable, but systematically put together, they nevertheless provide an insight into the main tendencies in the field.
Andrew et al. (n 12); Sevilla and Smith (n 12); Claudia Hupkau and Barbara Petrolongo, ‘Work, Care and Gender During the Covid-19 Crisis’ (2020) cep Discussion Paper.
Farré et al. (n 12).
Fodor et al. (n 12).
Kreyenfeld et al. (n 12); Zoch et al. (n 12).
To calculate overall time used by the parents we aggregated mean number of hours reported by males and mean number of hours reported by females in the sample. This can be considered as a fair approximation of what was happening in the households as most of the studies only looked at two-parent households.
Sevilla and Smith (n 12).
Daniela Del Boca et al., ‘Women’s Work, Housework and Childcare, before and during COVID-19’ (2020) iza Discussion Papers.
Kreyenfeld et al. (n 12).
Farré et al. (n 12).
Del Boca et al. (n 19).
Farré et al. (n 12).
unesco, ‘Education: From Disruption to Recovery’ <unesco.org> accessed 29 November 2021. Author’s calculations: Sweden was the only country in Europe whose schools never fully closed.
Alon et al. (n 3).
E.g. Jennifer L Hook, ‘Gender Inequality in the Welfare State: Sex Segregation in Housework’ 1965–2003 (2010) 115 (5) American Journal of Sociology 1480; Kan et al. (n 2).
Daniela Grunow et al., ‘Gender Ideologies in Europe: a Multidimensional Framework’ (2018) 80 (1) Journal of Marriage and Family 42.
Andrew et al. (n 12); Fodor et al. (n 12); Sevilla and Smith (n 12); Hupkau and Petrolongo (n 13).
Kreyenfeld et al. (n 12).
Sevilla and Smith (n 12); Del Boca et al. (n 19); Farré et al. (n 12); Fodor et al. (n 12).
Zoch et al. (n 12).
Sevilla and Smith (n 12).
Fodor et al. (n 12).
Del Boca et al. (n 19).
Fodor et al. (n 12); Farré et al. (n 12); Sevilla and Smith (n 12); Kreyenfeld et al. (n 12).
Farré et al. (n 12).
Farré et al. (n 12); Fodor et al. (n 12).
Kreyenfeld et al. (n 12); Sevilla and Smith (n 12); Andrew et al. (n 12).
Fodor et al. (n 12).
ibid.
Del Boca et al. (n 19).
Farré et al. (n 12).
E.g. Hipp and Bünning (n 12); Katja Möhring et al., ‘The COVID-19 Pandemic and Subjective Well-Being: Longitudinal Evidence on Satisfaction with Work and Family’ (2021) 23 (S1) European Societies S601.
Alon et al. (n 3); ilo, ‘ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the World of Work. Fifth Edition’ (2020); Eleni Papadimitriou and Zsuzsa Blaskó, ‘Economic Sectors at Risk Due to COVID-19 Disruptions: Will Men and Women in the EU be Affected Similarly?’ (2020) jrc Science for Policy Report.
Alon et al. (n 3).
Papadimitriou and Blasko (n 44).
Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska and Anna Matysiak, ‘The Motherhood Wage Penalty: a Meta-Analysis’ (2020) 88–89 Social Science Research 1.
Titan Alon et al., ‘This Time It’s Different: The Role of Women’s Employment in a Pandemic Recession’ (2020) nber Working Paper No. 27660.
Alon et al. (n 48).
Alicia Sasser Modestino et al., ‘The Importance of Childcare in Reopening the Economy’ Econofact (29 July 2020) <
Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes et al., ‘COVID-19 School Closures and Parental Labor Supply in the United States’ (2020) iza dp No. 13827.
Eurostat data, author’s calculations.
eige, ‘Gender Equality and the Socio-Economic Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic’ (2021) Publications Office of the European Union.
Eurostat, ‘Male Employment More Affected by the COVID-19 Crisis than Female Employment’ (30 April 2021) <
Andrew et al. (n 12).
Sevilla and Smith (n 12).
Andrew et al. (n 12).
Abi Adams-Prassl et al., ‘The Gender Wage Gap in an Online Labour Market: The Cost of Interruptions’ (2020) cepr Discussion Paper No. dp14294.
Flaminio Squazzoni et al., ‘Only Second-Class Tickets for Women in the COVID-19 Race. A Study on Manuscript Submissions and Reviews in 2329 Elsevier Journals’.
Alon et al. (n 48).
E.g. Hupkau and Petrolongo (n 13); Andrew et al. (n 12).
Scott Coltrane, ‘Research on Household Labor: Modeling and Measuring the Social Embeddedness of Routine Family Work’ (2020) 62 (4) Journal of Marriage and Family 1208.
Fuwa (n 7).
Daniel L Carlson and Jamie L Lynch, ‘Housework: Cause and Consequence of Gender Ideology?’ (2013) 42 (6) Social Science Research 1505.
Anna-Lena Almqvist and Ann-Zofie Duvander, ‘Changes in Gender Equality? Swedish Fathers’ Parental Leave, Division of Childcare and Housework’ (2014) 20 (1) Journal of Family Studies 19; Lídia Farré and Libertad González, ‘Does Paternity Leave Reduce Fertility?’ (2019) 172 Journal of Public Economics 52; Ankita Patnaik, ‘Reserving Time for Daddy: The Short and Long-Run Consequences of Fathers’ Quotas’ (2014) ssrn Electronic Journal; Marcus Tamm, ‘‘Fathers’ Parental Leave-Taking, Childcare Involvement and Labor Market Participation’ (2019) 59 Labour Economics 184.
Melanie Arntz et al., ‘Working from Home and COVID-19: the Chances and Risks for Gender Gaps’ (2020) 55 (6) Intereconomics 381.
Hupkau and Petrolongo (n 13).
Yerkes et al. (n 12).
Hupkau and Petrolongo (n 13).
Zoch et al. (n 12).
Fodor et al. (n 12); Del Boca et al. (n 19); Andrew et al. (n 12); Sevilla and Smith (n 12).
Tanja van der Lippe et al., ‘Unemployment and the Division of Housework in Europe’ (2018) 32 (4) Work, Employment and Society 650.
Andrew et al. (n 12).
Malte Reichelt et al., ‘The Impact of COVID-19 on Gender Inequality in the Labor Market and Gender-Role Attitudes’ (2021) 23 European Societies 228.
Carlson and Lynch (n 64).
Alon et al. (n 48).
Zoch et al. (n 12).
Fodor et al. (n 12).
Farré et al. (n 12).
Katherine Guyot and Isabel V Sawhill, ‘Telecommuting Will Likely Continue Long after the Pandemic’ Brookings (6 April 2020) <
References
Squazzoni F et al., ‘ Only Second-Class Tickets for Women in the COVID-19 Race. A Study on Manuscript Submissions and Reviews in 2329 Elsevier Journals’ (2020) 16 (10) PLoS ONE e0257919. October 10, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257919, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3712813 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3712813.