The impact of COVID-19 on the gender division of housework and childcare: Evidence from two waves of the pandemic in Italy

Daniela Del Boca, Oggero Noemi, Paola Profeta and Mariacristina Rossi
Additional contact information
Oggero Noemi: Department of Management, CeRP-Collegio Carlo Alberto, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

IZA Journal of Labor Economics, 2022, vol. 11, issue 1, 20

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on families’ lives because of the increased demands of housework and childcare. Much of the additional burden has been shouldered by women. Yet, the rise in remote working also has the potential to increase paternal involvement in family life and thus to reduce gender role inequalities. This effect depends on the working arrangements of each partner, whether working remotely, at their usual workplace, or ceasing work altogether. Using two waves of an ad-hoc survey conducted in April and November 2020, we show that the time spent by women in domestic activities did not depend on their partners’ working arrangements. Conversely, men spent fewer hours helping with housework and home schooling when their partners were at home. Although men who worked remotely or did not work at all devoted more time to household activities during the second wave of COVID-19, the increased time they spent at home did not seem to lead to a reallocation of couples’ time.

Keywords: gender; housework; childcare; work arrangements; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J16 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/izajole-2022-0003 (text/html)

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:vrs:izajle:v:11:y:2022:i:1:p:20:n:2

DOI: 10.2478/izajole-2022-0003

Access Statistics for this article

IZA Journal of Labor Economics is currently edited by Pierre Cahuc and Pamela Qendrai

More articles in IZA Journal of Labor Economics from Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().