Impacts of the COVID‐19 Lockdown on Gender Inequalities in Time Spent on Paid and Unpaid Work in Singapore

The COVID‐19 pandemic has affected gender inequalities in time spent on paid and unpaid work globally. Few studies outside of the Western context (i.e., countries in Australasia, Europe, or the Americas) have used longitudinal data to compare time use before and during the pandemic, focused on poten...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Population and development review 2024-07, Vol.50 (S1), p.303-337
Main Authors: Zang, Emma, Tan, Poh Lin, Lyttelton, Thomas, Guo, Anna
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Child care
COVID-19
Employment
Fathers
Gender
Gender aspects
Gender inequality
Households
Housework
Mothers
Pandemics
Panel data
Socioeconomic status
Socioeconomics
Time use
Unpaid
Wives
Women
Working hours
Working mothers
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Summary:The COVID‐19 pandemic has affected gender inequalities in time spent on paid and unpaid work globally. Few studies outside of the Western context (i.e., countries in Australasia, Europe, or the Americas) have used longitudinal data to compare time use before and during the pandemic, focused on potential mechanisms through which the pandemic affects gender inequalities in time use, or examined the heterogeneous effects of socioeconomic status. We examine the impact of the COVID‐19 lockdown on gender inequalities in time spent on paid work, housework, and childcare in Singapore. Using a panel dataset of 290 married women interviewed before, during, and after the lockdown, and applying between‐within models, we find that gender gaps in housework hours increased during and persisted after the lockdown, even as the gender gap in paid work hours narrowed. The gap in childcare hours expanded among households with fewer resources but decreased among households with more resources. Mothers responded to loss of income and employment by increasing their childcare and housework time more than fathers, suggesting that “doing gender,” rather than time availability or material resources, provide the key mechanism explaining gendered changes in time use. Our results highlight that when a pandemic strikes, women, especially those in less‐resourced households, were put in a particularly vulnerable position compared to men.
ISSN:0098-7921
1728-4457
DOI:10.1111/padr.12554