Mehrfachbelastung unter COVID-19: Home-Office und Hausarbeit

At the beginning of the COVID -19 pandemic, some economists argued that the crisis could decrease gender inequalities in unpaid work, as many men are now forced to stay at home, thus seeing how much time is needed for housework and childcare – work that is predominantly done by women. As a result, it is argued that men would be more willing to take on a larger share of unpaid work in the future. Greater gender equity has therefore been an expected consequence of the pandemic.

In contrast, several other scientific papers on the consequences of home office from the past show very different results regarding its impact on gender equality: Studies from Germany conducted before the COVID -19 pandemic indicate that working from home does not (automatically) change gender roles and the distribution of unpaid care work, does not provide either mothers or fathers with a gain in leisure time and even increases the care work performed by mothers. Therefore, we collected data on the distribution of paid and unpaid work within households and changes due to COVID -19 restrictions in Austria by means of an online questionnaire, which allows us to analyse these suppositions more closely. As usually done in time use surveys, we asked the respondents to think about their last working day and to report their use of time in intervals of 15 minutes. Moreover, we collected data on home office arrangements, mental health conditions, potential conflicts, the economic situation and several socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Since home office is only available to a certain group of people and branches, our sample focuses on higher educated women and men, who live in Vienna.

We see that the possibility to work from home is likely to reinforce existing role models and lead to multiple burden for women, as the pandemic, in combination with school closures and the unavailability of grandparents for childcare, is shifted childcare to the private sector