Gender Inequality in Paid and Unpaid Work During Covid‐19 Times

• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Author: Lídia Farré,Yarine Fawaz,Libertad González,Jennifer Graves
• Date: 01 June 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12563

© 2021 The Authors. Review of Income and Wealth published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of

International Association for Research in Income and Wealth

323

GENDER INEQUALITY IN PAID AND UNPAID WORK DURING

COVID- 19 TIMES

by Lídia Farré

IAE- CSIC,Universitat de Barcelona

yarine Fawaz

CEMFI

Libertad GonzáLez

Barcelona School of Economics,Universitat Pompeu Fabra

AND

JenniFer Graves*

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

We employ real- time household data to study the impact of the pandemic lockdown on paid and unpaid

work in Spain. We document large employment losses that affected more severely low- skilled workers

and to some extent college educated women. We show that the pandemic resulted in an increase in the

gender gap in total hours worked, including paid and unpaid work. This is due to the smaller decrease

in paid work hours among women that was not compensated by a smaller increase in unpaid work. We

also examine the impact of the lockdown on within- household specialization patterns. We find that

while men slightly increased their participation in home production, the burden continued to be borne

by women, irrespective of their labor market situation. This evidence suggests that traditional explana-

tions cannot account for the unequal distribution of the domestic workload. Additional analysis sup-

ports gender norms as a plausible explanation for our findings.

JEL Codes: D13, J13, J16

Keywords: Covid- 19, labor market, household work, childcare, gender

Note: Graves and Fawaz acknowledge funding from the Fundacion Ramon Areces (18th Social

Science National Competition) that made survey collection possible. Fawaz acknowledges support from

the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant PGC2018- 097598). Graves acknowledges sup-

port from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant ECO2017- 82882- R) and joint support

from the Community of Madrid and UAM (grant SI1- PJI- 2019- 00326). Farré and González acknowl-

edge financial support from the IZA Emergency Research Trust. Farré acknowledges the financial sup-

port of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant PID2019- 104319RB- I00), Agaur

(2020PANDE00076) and the Government of Catalonia (grant SGR2017- 644). González acknowledges

the financial support of ICREA Academia.

*Correspondence to: Jennifer Graves, Department of Economics and Public Finance, Universidad

Autónoma de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria de Cantoblanco, Madrid 28049, Spain (jennifer.graves@

uam.es; jenniferagraves@gmail.com)

Review of Income and Wealth

Series 68, Number 2, June 2022

DOI: 10.1111/roiw.12563

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creat ive Commo ns Attri butio n- NonCo mmerc

ial- NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work

is properly cited, the use is non- commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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Review of Income and Wealth, Series 68, Number 2, June 2022

324

© 2021 The Authors. Review of Income and Wealth published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of

International Association for Research in Income and Wealth

1. introduction

The Covid- 19 pandemic altered the normal functioning of labor markets and

the organization of family life. The outbreak in most industrialized countries in

early 2020 led to important employment losses and forced a large fraction of the

workforce to work from home. In addition, the closure of educational centers and

the impossibility to outsource domestic services represented an unprecedented

increase in home production that could only be absorbed by family members.

Spain is an interesting case study as it was hit early and hard by the new virus

and suffered one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe. In a matter of hours, life

across the entire country changed from business- as- usual to nearly complete home

confinement for non- essential workers. To contain the dramatic spread of the

virus, on March 14, 2020, the government announced that effective in 24hours,

Spain would enter into a “state of alarm.” The state of alarm entailed a nationwide

lockdown, closing all educational facilities and banning all trips that were not of

absolutely necessity. Residents were ordered to stay home except to buy food or

medicine, go to work, go to the hospital, or other emergencies. From April 26, 2020,

the mobility restrictions were progressively lifted, and the state of alarm ended by

June 21, 2020. Regular educational activities were resumed by mid- September.

To investigate the effects of these particularly stringent containment measures

put in place during the first spike in Covid- 19, we ran an internet- based survey on a

representative sample of 5,000 individuals in May of 2020. In this paper, we employ

this newly collected data to document the impact of the pandemic lockdown on paid

and unpaid work across genders. We show that the pandemic represented import-

ant job losses for both men and women, and that the increase in domestic time

demands was equally absorbed by both family members. However, we identify an

increase in the gender gap in total work hours resulting from a smaller decrease in

the number of hours in paid work and a larger increase in hours devoted to unpaid

work among women. The outbreak of the pandemic and the measures adopted to

contain the expansion of the virus represented a gender- symmetric shock in terms

of employment, but asymmetric in terms of the distribution of unpaid work.

We also find that the lockdown had a negligible effect on the gendered spe-

cialization pattern within households, as women continued to bear a larger share

of the domestic workload irrespective of their situation in the labor market. Only

in non- traditional families (i.e. those with an egalitarian pre- lockdown distribution

of home production) was the employment situation of both members relevant in

determining the distribution of domestic tasks during lockdown. In traditional

families, we find suggestive evidence that the gender of the spouse whose work-

ing situation changed during lockdown had a differential effect on changes in the

allocation of household tasks, being detrimental to women. Our findings suggest

that the presence of social norms rather than differences in time availability or bar-

gaining power are better suited to understand the gendered specialization patterns

observed among Spanish households.

We contribute to an emerging literature on the effects of the Covid- 19 crisis

on labor markets and gender inequality. We are part of a small group of studies

that collected detailed, representative survey data during the confinement period

in the Spring of 2020. A strength of our data is that it contains parallel