no25-29

[29] COVID-19 Effects on Working Parent Gender Divisions

- Emphasizing transformation of housework and childcare pre-, peri-, and post-declaration of a state of emergency -

○Sumiko Ishibashi¹, Riku Takeda², Mamoru Taniguchi³ (1. School of Science and Engineering, University of Tsukuba, 2. Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba, 3. Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, University of Tsukuba)

Keywords:COVID-19, gender division, work-from-home, housework, childcare

The current COVID-19 pandemic has provided a great opportunity to expose the gender division in terms of work and home labor. We used diary data of pre-/peri-/post- declaration of a state of emergency to measure the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on gender division of home labor in workers with children under the age of 12. We revealed that men’s housework had increased during the declaration and did not return to “normal” again after its termination, while women’s housework, childcare and men’s childcare returned “normal”. This change, that came along with the increase of work-from-home, was a little but significant step towards a reduction of gender division of home labor in the future.