Women’s decision-making on additional unpaid work during the COVID-19 pandemic: assessing the role of finance

This article investigates the determinants of women’s additional unpaid work during the specific circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Apart from the influential factors usually investigated in the standard model of unpaid work, we contribute to recent research by including variables such as financial literacy and family financial fragility. Pandemic lockdown altered the normal functioning of families and created financial uncertainty. Thus, we hypothesised that women’s financial literacy and family financial fragility influenced women’s decision to take on less or more unpaid work and could alter the division of unpaid work between women and other family members. We employed real-time individual-level data from the survey that we conducted during the second lockdown restrictions in January and February 2021. Croatia is an interesting case to investigate unpaid work determinants because although it has joined the E.U. and accepted positive legal aspects of gender equality, conservative gender norms still dominate there. The results revealed that women’s financial literacy negatively affects women’s willingness to take on more unpaid work while the deteriorating family financial situation in the pandemic has a positive effect.