Comment – Did the COVID-19 Crisis Contribute to a Change in the Gender-Based Division of Work within Families?

Hélène Couprie ()

Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, 2022, issue 536-37, 51-55

Abstract: [eng] This commentary puts into perspective two of the articles in this issue, which analyse the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the allocation of time within families in France: one written by Ariane Pailhé, Anne Solaz and Lionel Wilner, the other by Hugues Champeaux and Francesca Marchetta. Both reveal that family arrangements appeared generally flexible, since time use changed significantly in the context of the crisis, leading to men becoming much more involved in household chores and parenting in particular. However, far from being unprecedented, this flexibility is compatible with a traditional division of roles according to gender. The changes observed may result from a model of domestic production in which the man plays the role of a secondary worker who can be mobilised in the event of the unavailability of the primary worker, the woman. Decisions made by families in France are still anchored to gender norms; not only does this constitute a waste of resources, it also generates temporal inequalities that may manifest as intra-family conflicts.

JEL-codes: D13 I31 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/fichier/6667535/03_ES536-37_Couprie_EN.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nse:ecosta:ecostat_2022_536_3

DOI: 10.24187/ecostat.2022.536.2088

Access Statistics for this article

Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Dominique Goux

More articles in Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics from Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Veronique Egloff ().