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Home, sweet home? The impact of working from home on the division of unpaid work during the COVID-19 lockdown

Author

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  • Derndorfer, Judith
  • Disslbacher, Franziska
  • Lechinger, Vanessa
  • Mär, Katharina
  • Six, Eva

Abstract

A lockdown implies a shift from the public to the private sphere, and from market to non-market production, thereby increasing the volume of unpaid work. Already before the pandemic, unpaid work was disproportionately borne by women. This paper studies the effect of working from home for pay (WFH), due to a lockdown, on the change in the division of housework and childcare within couple households. While previous studies on the effect of WFH on the reconciliation of work and family life and the division of labour within the household suffered from selection bias, we are able to identify this effect by drawing upon the shock of the first COVID-19 lockdown in Austria. The corresponding legal measures left little choice over WFH. In any case, WFH is exogenous, conditional on a small set of individual and household characteristics we control for. We employ data from a survey on the gendered aspects of the lockdown. The dataset includes detailed information on time use during the lockdown and on the quality and experience of WFH. Uniquely, this survey data also includes information on the division, and not only magnitude, of unpaid work within households. Austria is an interesting case in this respect as it is characterized by very conservative gender norms. The results reveal that the probability of men taking on a larger share of housework increases if men are WFH alone or together with their female partner. By contrast, the involvement of men in childcare increased only in the event that the female partner was not able to WFH. Overall, the burden of childcare, and particularly homeschooling, was disproportionately borne by women.

Suggested Citation

  • Derndorfer, Judith & Disslbacher, Franziska & Lechinger, Vanessa & Mär, Katharina & Six, Eva, 2021. "Home, sweet home? The impact of working from home on the division of unpaid work during the COVID-19 lockdown," SocArXiv 5ypb2, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:5ypb2
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/5ypb2
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    1. Boll, Christina & Müller, Dana & Schüller, Simone, 2021. "Neither Backlash nor Convergence: Dynamics of Intracouple Childcare Division after the First COVID-19 Lockdown and Subsequent Reopening in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 14375, IZA Network @ LISER.
    2. Jorck, Gerrit von & Börger, Tobias & Ghirardello, Linda & Meyerhoff, Jürgen & Praetorius, Barbara, 2025. "The impact of work arrangements on the choice to work from home: a discrete-continuous choice experiment," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 59, pages 1-029.
    3. Julia Bock-Schappelwein & Ulrike Famira-Mühlberger & Ulrike Huemer & Walter Hyll, 2021. "Der österreichische Arbeitsmarkt im Zeichen der COVID-19-Pandemie," WIFO Monatsberichte (monthly reports), WIFO, vol. 94(5), pages 371-388, May.
    4. Lara Minkus & Nicolai Groepler & Sonja Drobnič, 2022. "The significance of occupations, family responsibilities, and gender for working from home: Lessons from COVID-19," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(6), pages 1-17, June.
    5. Randal Joy Thompson, 2023. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Working Women with Caring Responsibilities: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis," Merits, MDPI, vol. 3(1), pages 1-19, January.
    6. Julia Bock-Schappelwein & Ulrike Famira-Mühlberger & Ulrike Huemer & Walter Hyll, 2021. "The Austrian Labour Market in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic," WIFO Reports on Austria, WIFO, issue 7, June.
    7. Fatemeh Hamedanian, 2022. "Access to the European Labor Market for Immigrant Women in the Wake of the COVID Pandemic," World, MDPI, vol. 3(4), pages 1-22, November.
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    10. Mariana Loezar-Hernández & Erica Briones-Vozmediano & Elena Ronda-Pérez & Laura Otero-García, 2023. "Juggling during Lockdown: Balancing Telework and Family Life in Pandemic Times and Its Perceived Consequences for the Health and Wellbeing of Working Women," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(6), pages 1-17, March.
    11. Ketoki Mazumdar & Sneha Parekh & Isha Sen, 2023. "Mothering load: Underlying realities of professionally engaged Indian mothers during a global crisis," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 1080-1103, May.
    12. Mejía-Guevara, Iván & Fuentes, María Estela Rivero, 2024. "Intergenerational paid and unpaid labor production and consumption inequality by gender in Mexico," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 27(C).
    13. Isabella Buber-Ennser & Caroline Berghammer & Maria Winkler-Dworak, 2024. "Partnership dissolution in Austria during multiple crises, 2018-2023," VID Working Papers 2403, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
    14. Janeen Baxter & Alice Campbell & Rennie Lee, 2023. "Gender Gaps in Unpaid Domestic and Care Work: Putting The Pandemic in (a Life Course) Perspective," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 56(4), pages 502-515, December.
    15. Boll, Christina & Müller, Dana & Schüller, Simone, 2023. "Neither backlash nor convergence: dynamics of intra-couple childcare division during the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 57, pages 1-027.
    16. Anna Kurowska & Anna Matysiak & Beata Osiewalska, 2023. "Working from Home During Covid-19 Pandemic and Changes to Fertility Intentions Among Parents," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 39(1), pages 1-31, December.
    17. Stefanie Gerold & Johannes Buhl & Sonja M. Geiger, 2024. "How to Enhance Time Wealth? Insights from Changes in Time Use and Working Conditions During the COVID-19 Lockdown in Germany," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 171(1), pages 349-371, January.
    18. Anna Kurowska & Agnieszka Kasperska, 2024. "Work from Home and Perceptions of Career Prospects of Employees with Children," Working Papers 2024-08, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    19. Krammer, Sorin, 2021. "Navigating The New Normal: Which Firms Have Adapted Better To The Covid-19 Disruption?," MPRA Paper 109485, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Valerija Botric & Sonja Radas & Bruno Skrinjaric, 2023. "Gender differences in management styles during crisis and the effect on firm performance," Working Papers 2301, The Institute of Economics, Zagreb.
    21. Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska & Anna Matysiak & Agnieszka Kasperska, 2023. "Gender and family perspectives on the uptake of ICT-induced home-based work," Working Papers 2023-01, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.

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