The Gendered Division of Paid and Domestic Work Under Lockdown

32 Pages Posted: 29 Jul 2020

See all articles by Alison Andrew

Alison Andrew

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)

Sarah Cattan

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)

Monica Costa Dias

School of Economics, University of Bristol; Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)

Christine Farquharson

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)

Lucy Kraftman

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)

Sonya Krutikova

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)

Angus Phimister

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Almudena Sevilla

Queen Mary, University of London

Abstract

COVID-19 has uprooted many aspects of parents' daily routines, from their jobs to their childcare arrangements. In this paper, we provide a novel description of how parents in England living in two-parent opposite-gender families are spending their time under lockdown. We find that mothers' paid work has taken a larger hit than that of fathers', on both the extensive and intensive margins. We find that mothers are spending substantially longer in childcare and housework than their partners and that they are spending a larger fraction of their paid work hours having to juggle work and childcare. Gender differences in the allocation of domestic work cannot be straightforwardly explained by gender differences in employment rates or earnings. Very large gender asymmetries emerge when one partner has stopped working for pay during the crisis: mothers who have stopped working for pay do far more domestic work than fathers in the equivalent situation do.

JEL Classification: J21, J22, J24, J33, J63

Suggested Citation

Andrew, Alison and Cattan, Sarah and Costa Dias, Monica and Farquharson, Christine and Kraftman, Lucy and Krutikova, Sonya and Phimister, Angus and Sevilla, Almudena, The Gendered Division of Paid and Domestic Work Under Lockdown. IZA Discussion Paper No. 13500, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3654937 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3654937

Alison Andrew (Contact Author)

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) ( email )

7 Ridgmount Street
London, WC1E 7AE
United Kingdom

Sarah Cattan

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) ( email )

7 Ridgmount Street
London, WC1E 7AE
United Kingdom

Monica Costa Dias

School of Economics, University of Bristol ( email )

Bristol
United Kingdom

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) ( email )

7 Ridgmount Street
London, WC1E 7AE
United Kingdom

Christine Farquharson

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) ( email )

7 Ridgmount Street
London, WC1E 7AE
United Kingdom

Lucy Kraftman

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) ( email )

7 Ridgmount Street
London, WC1E 7AE
United Kingdom

Sonya Krutikova

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) ( email )

7 Ridgmount Street
London, WC1E 7AE
United Kingdom

Angus Phimister

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Almudena Sevilla

Queen Mary, University of London ( email )

Mile End Road
London, E1 4NS
United Kingdom

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
832
Abstract Views
2,698
Rank
51,195
PlumX Metrics