Research Institute Economics of Inequality, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria.
Department of Economics and Statistics, Chamber of Labor, Vienna, Austria.
PLoS One. 2021 Nov 8;16(11):e0259580. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0259580. eCollection 2021.
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.
封锁意味着从公共领域向私人领域转移，从市场生产向非市场生产转移，从而增加了无偿工作的数量。在大流行之前，无偿工作就已经不成比例地由女性承担。本文研究了由于封锁而进行有报酬的居家办公（WFH）对夫妻家庭中家务和育儿分工变化的影响。虽然之前关于 WFH 对工作与家庭生活协调以及家庭内部劳动分工影响的研究受到选择偏差的影响，但我们能够通过利用奥地利第一次 COVID-19 封锁的冲击来识别这种影响。相应的法律措施几乎没有选择居家办公的余地。无论如何，WFH 是外生的，取决于我们控制的一小部分个人和家庭特征。我们利用关于封锁性别方面的一项调查数据。该数据集包括封锁期间时间使用的详细信息，以及 WFH 的质量和体验。该调查数据在这方面是独一无二的，因为它还包括家庭内部无偿工作的分工情况，而不仅仅是规模。奥地利在这方面是一个有趣的案例，因为它的性别规范非常保守。研究结果表明，如果男性独自或与女性伴侣一起居家办公，男性承担更多家务的概率会增加。相比之下，只有当女性伴侣无法居家办公时，男性才会更多地参与育儿。总体而言，育儿的负担，尤其是在家教育，不成比例地由女性承担。
