Different reversibility of skeletal muscle mass and strength in elderly Japanese women after the first wave of COVID-19

BackgroundRestrictions on outdoor movements due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic have led to a decreased physical activity;this can lead to sarcopenia and frailty in older adults. Our recent study has demonstrated a significant decrease in the trunk muscle mass immediately after the pandemic's first wave (April–May 2020) among Japanese community-dwelling older women. In the present study, we further examined whether muscle mass recovery or deterioration occurs after 1 year of the pandemic's first wave by comparing physical measurements among the following assessment periods: before the first wave, immediately after the first wave, and at 1-year follow-up thereafter.MethodsThis study included 77 women (78.0 ± 5.7 years) who underwent physical measurements for muscle mass, grip strength, one-leg stand-up ability (3 s), and oral motor skills and answered questionnaires on sociality (social network, participation, and support) in the three assessment periods.ResultsThe frequency of going out and the subjective vitality were significantly decreased immediately after the first wave;these recovered at the 1-year follow-up (P < 0.001). When comparing muscular measures, the trunk muscle mass index preferentially decreased immediately after the first wave but recovered significantly at the 1-year follow-up (P < 0.001). Conversely, the appendicular skeletal muscle mass index (ASMI) and grip strength continued to decrease until the 1-year follow-up (P < 0.001 and P = 0.03, respectively). The ability to perform a one-leg stand-up for 3 s and the oral motor skills did not change significantly across the assessment periods. The prevalence of pre-sarcopenia and sarcopenia tended to increase during these periods (P = 0.068). The reduction and subsequent recovery patterns for sociality were similar to those observed for the trunk muscle mass.ConclusionsOur findings demonstrated differences in the reversibility of skeletal muscle mass and strength at 1 year after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: the trunk muscle mass declined acutely and recovered rapidly, whereas the ASMI and grip strength declined continuously. These differences in the skeletal muscle recovery and deterioration might help formulate short-term or long-term strategies for COVID-19-related sarcopenia prevention in community-dwelling older adults.

GENDER EQUALITY UNDER SIEGE: PERCEPTIONS AND SATISFACTION OF TELECOMMUTING WOMEN WORKERS WITH THE DISTRIBUTION OF UNPAID WORK DURING THE COVID-19 LOCKDOWN

This study analyses the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the division of domestic work as regards women in opposite-gender relationships, telecommuting and living as a couple, during the first lockdown in Portugal. Quantitative and qualitative data was collected (N = 171) to understand women's perceptions of time spent on unpaid work, satisfaction, and main difficulties in this period. Results revealed women's dissatisfaction, especially mothers of underage children, who perceived an increase in caregiving tasks. Women's satisfaction also impacted their perception of the causes for these gender asymmetries. The less satisfied women ascribe gender inequalities mainly to socio-normative factors and gender stereotypes, while the more satisfied women ascribe them to aspects of socialisation and upbringing, as well as innate dispositions that differ between men and women. The trend towards more equality found prior to Covid-19 was not found. © 2022 Associacao Portuguesa de Estudos sobre as Mulheres. All rights reserved.

Impacts of COVID-19 on Wives of Nepali Migrants and Future Foreign Employment Decision-making

With over 55% of households having labour migrants and over 25% of the GDP attributable to migrants' remittance, migration plays an important role in economic development of Nepal but also in overall wellbeing of the Nepali households. While there have been considerable studies on the impact of migration both from social and economic perspectives, little is known about how migrants and their households make decisions to migrate. Moreover, there is limited research on how crisis in destination countries affect migration decision-making among migrants and their left-behind household members. Taking the example of the current COVID-19 crisis, this article discusses the context within which people are taking migration decisions and how the experiences of crisis affects decision-making about pursuing foreign employment for people who have previous migration experience. This article discusses the experience of migrants' wives during the pandemic in relation to their husband's migration, alternative livelihood experience of migrants (returnees, those on a holiday and aspiring migrants) in the home country, impacts of COVID-19 ban on aspiring migrants, and aspiring migrants and their wives' perspectives towards future foreign employment. The article argues that given a high interest amongst the returnees and their spouses to work in Nepal, current employment programmes brought forward by the government should take the opportunity as a way of retaining the human resources in Nepal.

The unforgiving work environment of black African women domestic workers in a post-apartheid South Africa

In democratic South Africa, many Black African women are still subjugated by being employed as domestic workers. Increasing evidence emerged amid the COVID-19 pandemic revealing unmistakable signs of modern-day slavery among South African Black domestic workers. This paper proposes a clinical model which examines how gender, class, and race intersections affect the ways in which specifically identified change agents offer new, transforming interventions via clinical intervention. Adopting a clinical approach augments identification of a specific social problem from a scientifically systematic applied approach built on applied theory. We report on the conditions facing vulnerable Black African women using a bricolage research approach. The resulting model explicitly identifies systemic inequalities and indicates how to reduce exploitation and protect workers. The bricolage approach aided the secondary qualitative analysis of complex bonded-labour intersections. The problem of Black African women living as bonded domestic labour is augmented by the girl children's primary socialisation, Western patriarchal re-socialisation which sustains apartheid, and race, class, occupational, and gender inequalities.

The Limits of Mutual Aid and the Promise of Liberation within Radical Politics of Care

The present COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated conditions for continued survival, and community-based mutual aid networks have appeared seemingly organically to address such conditions. I argue these networks often fail to recognize capitalism's mediation of caring labor, namely, the processes of survival and reproduction which are consistently undermined and demanded by capital's accumulation. Instead, I propose a politics of care built on insights from the Black Panther Party's and the Wages for Housework campaign's respective responses to a lack of reproductive resources, which emphasize the position of survival struggles as a primary site of anti-capitalist political agitation and mobilization. © 2022 The author(s).

Time at Home, Fertility Intention and Housework Change *

We examine the effect of the increase in time spent at home on married individuals' fertility intention in South Korea. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing measures have led to the overall increase of the time spent at home, which offers a valuable opportunity to examine its effects on fertility intention. Employing the second wave of the survey on Koreans' values regarding marriage and family in the COVID-19 era, carried out in June 2022, we tested the relationship controlling the potential effects of the COVID-19. The analysis reveals that when time spent at home increases, individuals are more likely to give up or delay their fertility plan. A mechanism of the adverse relationship is found to be the increased housework burden. The mediating effects of the increase of the housework are observed prominently among women, dual-earning couples, and those who have one child. This study provides that the adverse effect of the increased housework burden outweighs the potential positive effects of the increase of time spent at home, giving suggestive implications for the low fertility in South Korea.

Socioeconomic differences and the gender division of labor during the covid-19 lockdown: Insights from france using a mixed method

The sudden and unanticipated shocks to employment and the almost total retreat into the domestic sphere caused by the COVID-19 lockdowns provide a unique opportunity to explore the resilience of the three classical theoretical paradigms of the gendered division of labor within couples, that is, the time availability theory, the relative resource theory, and the "doing gender" perspective. Accordingly, this article analyzes how socioeconomic differences shaped the gendered division of labor during the first lockdown in France. We use a mixed-methods approach that combines representative quantitative data drawn from the Epidemiology and Living Conditions (EpiCOV) survey of EpiCOV in France during the COVID-19 pandemic and qualitative data from in-depth interviews of French families collected throughout the spring 2020 lockdown. Over the period, the heavy domestic and parental workload and its division between partners were mainly determined by employment status. However, the influence of time availability on the division of labor was mitigated by the doing gender mechanisms, whatever the partners' relative resources. The gender division of housework and childcare persisted, and the tasks performed differed, parenting tasks especially. Even if highly-educated mothers were able to negotiate their partner's investment in domestic and parental work, the division of labor remained unequal. Mothers remained in charge of organizing housework and childcare, and this may have altered their subjective experience of lockdown, especially for those embedded in the most egalitarian configurations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Locked-down love: A study of intimate relationships before and after the COVID lockdown

Objective: To assess love and relationship satisfaction among dating and married participants pre- and post-COVID-19 lockdown in India. Background: Extant literature demonstrates the impact of stressors like terror attacks and natural disasters on intimate relations. Yet little is known about how a significant stressor like the COVID-19 lockdown will impact love among married and dating couples. Method: Data from a convenience sample of 100 participants (65 dating, 35 married) was collected in two waves, first in January-March and then in May after the lockdown. Participants completed an online survey with measures of love, relationship satisfaction, self-esteem, and how they spent time with their partner. Paired sample t test, correlation analysis, and thematic analysis were used. Results: For both dating and married participants, scores on relationship satisfaction, love, intimacy and passion were significantly lower post-lockdown compared with the pre-lockdown period. Commitment for those dating remained unaffected. Watching movies together and revisiting old memories was related to love for those dating, whereas for married couples, doing household chores, cooking, and watching movies together was associated with love. Conclusion: Passion and intimacy in relationships changed after the COVID-19 lockdown. How couples spent time with each other during the lockdown holds important implications for relationship satisfaction. Implications: Practitioners who work with couples must focus on ways in which couples spend quality time with each other. Norms that define a relationship, particularly with regard to participation in domestic work by men, must be revisited to adapt to the new normal. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Born or not: A moderated mediation model of the relationship between work-family conflict and female employees' wellbeing based on fertility intention during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The previous academic research on work-family conflict mainly focused on the relevant elements in the work field. This study concludes that elements of the family domain have a significant impact on the relationship between work-family conflict and employee wellbeing. Female employees' perceptions of wellbeing largely depend on their willingness to have children when they take on family roles. During COVID-19, employees had more time to fulfill both work and family roles in the family sphere due to the epidemic blockade, the contribution of the female employee's significant other (husband) in family matters had a significant impact on Fertility intention. This study using SPSS 24.0 AMOS 20.0 and M plus 7.4 statistical analysis tools to test the proposed hypotheses. In the paired data of 412 working female employees and husbands of Chinese dual-earner families with different occupational backgrounds, hypothesis testing results support that female employees' work → family conflict is negatively related to female employees' fertility intentions, and female employees' fertility intentions are positively related to wellbeing; female employees' family → work conflict is negatively related to female employees' wellbeing; husband's flexible work stress is negatively related to husband's share of housework; husband's share of housework moderated the front, rear and overall mediating effects by the fertility intention. When formulating policies, the managers should consider not only the direct effects of policies, but also the indirect effects that policies may have on other family members of employees. Managers should develop management policies during an epidemic that are more responsive to the actual needs of employees during an epidemic. The management of female employees should give due consideration to the family status of female employees and the enterprises should recognize the importance of childcare for female employees.

Parents' work arrangements and gendered time use during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective: This study uses time diaries to examine how parents' work arrangements shaped their time use at home and work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Background: The pandemic transformed home and work life for parents, disrupting employment and childcare. The shift to work from home offered more flexibility to manage increased care burdens, but the lack of separation between work and family also likely contributed to more challenging work environments, especially among mothers. Method: This study relies on the 2017-2020 American Time Use Survey and matching to estimate changes in time use among parents working from home and on site in the pandemic relative to comparable parents prior to the pandemic. Results: Data showed no overall increases in primary childcare time among working parents. Parents working from home during the pandemic, however, spent more time in the presence of children and supervising children, much in combination with paid work. Mothers working from home increased their supervisory parenting while working for pay more than fathers, and they more often changed their paid work schedules. The study's main findings were robust to gendered unemployment and labor force exits. Conclusion: Parents, especially mothers, working from home responded to childcare demands through multitasking and schedule changes with potential negative effects on work quality and stress. Parents working on site during the pandemic experienced smaller changes in time use. Implications: The pandemic has generated new inequalities between those with and without the flexibility to work from home, and exacerbated gender inequalities among those working from home.

Review article: Parenting leaves, workplace characteristics, male health, and the pandemic: Currents in policy-related fatherhood research in higher income countries

Objective: This review article provides an overview on the state of policy-related fatherhood research in high income countries. Background: The review article focuses on four main currents of multi-disciplinary policy-related fatherhood research. The first considers the research on national level parenting leaves. The second explores research on organisation and workplace policies. The third presents research on policies around male health and fatherhood practices. The fourth looks at the impact of COVID-19 related policies on fathers. Method: This is a review article and so presents a review of the literature. It is not a systematic literature review but rather aims to show the benefit of multi-disciplinary conversation within fatherhood research. Results: Commonalities are found across the four policy-related areas in terms of key questions, but also in terms of research gaps. Conclusion: There is consensus around what works for engaging fathers across policy contexts. There is perhaps a paradox in that `de-gendered' policies are usually most effective, but that fathers need to recognise that these degendered policies are for them.

Couples in Lockdown: "La vie en rose”?

Stay-at-home policies during the COVID-19 pandemic challenged household members who faced forced cohabitation and increased housework (domestic chores and childcare). Based on individual data collected online from partnered women during the spring 2020 in France, we study the lockdown effects on housework division and conflicts between partners. We find that during the lockdown, couples experienced minor changes in the allocation of housework, mainly carried out by women. Simultaneously, men increased their participation in the production of household goods mainly through "enjoyable” or "quasi-leisure” activities. Our results suggest that the gendered connotation of domestic work can be context-dependent and not stable over time. Tensions between partners, reported by women, increased during the lockdown, and appear to be strongly correlated with an unequal division of housework. Overall, our results suggest that this period did not structurally affect the gender stereotypes at home. © 2022, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques. All rights reserved.

Housework and Parenting during the Lockdowns in France: How Have Socio-Economic and Gender Inequalities Changed?

The lockdowns imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic had an unprecedented impact on people's time use. This article analyses the changes in time spent on household tasks and parenting by men and women during the lockdowns of the spring and autumn of 2020 in France, by social category, education, working arrangements and family configurations, using data from the major longitudinal EpiCov survey. The time spent on housework was high in the spring of 2020 and caring for children was particularly time consuming. This additional domestic and parental burden affected both women and men, but women continued to perform the majority of the housework, in spite of the similar working conditions between the sexes during this period. During the first lockdown, women at the top of the social hierarchy, who generally perform fewer household chores, spent far more time than usual on these tasks, thereby temporarily reducing social differences. © 2022, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques. All rights reserved.

Life Satisfaction and Telework during COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan

This study mainly aims to investigate the effects of telework on life satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. The hypothesis this research examines are: (1) the positive relationship between life satisfaction and telework, (2) the optimum point of telework to total working hours exists, (3) telework promotes spending time on housework and childcare. Statistical analysis is mainly conducted, and additionally, machine learning is conducted. As the results, it was found that (1) a positive relationship between life satisfaction and telework is observed, (2) the effect of telework on life satisfaction was the largest in the case of less than 50%, and (3) telework increased the time for housework and childcare clearly in the cases of males. © 2022 ACM.

Fremmedgjort på hjemmekontor?

Under koronapandemien har nær halvparten av alle ansatte i Norge jobbet fra hjemmekontor. Hva skjer i en situasjon hvor mange arbeidstakere, som kanskje har lite erfaring med det å jobbe hjemmefra, sendes hjem med en datamaskin og kun ser kolleger og ledere i digitale møter? Formålet med denne artikkelen er å undersøke arbeidtakeres erfaringer med hjemmekontor, og om fremmedgjøring kan være et nyttig begrep for å forstå disse erfaringene. Vi studerer fremmedgjøring som mangel på autonomi og handlekraft, fragmentert identitet, manglende fellesskap og mening i arbeidet. Basert på 26 kvalitative intervjuer med arbeidstakere undersøker vi hvordan hjemmekontor som arbeidsorganisering former arbeidstakeres forhold til sitt arbeid, de sosiale relasjonene i arbeidet og den relasjonen de har til produktene av sitt arbeid. Vi finner at ansvaret for grensesetting og skjerming av arbeidstid og gjennomføring av oppgaver på hjemmekontoret i stor grad er individualisert. Denne individualiseringen av ansvaret kan av arbeidstaker oppleves som noe positivt i form av økt autonomi og fleksibilitet. I individualiseringen og fleksibiliteten kan det samtidig ligge en risiko for fremmedgjøring: en følelse av ikke å ha tilstrekkelig handlekraft for å gjøre en god jobb, at arbeidstiden flyter inn i fritiden, familietiden eller privatlivet og motsatt, en mangel på et fellesskap med kolleger og opplevd meningsløshet i jobben. Forståelsen av disse opplevelsene som fremmedgjøring, fremfor individuelle problemer med grensesetting, viser at fremmedgjøring fremdeles kan være relevant for å forstå utfordringer i dagens arbeidsliv.Alternate :During the corona pandemic, almost half of all employees in Norway worked from a home office. What happens in a situation where many employees, who may have little experience of working from home, are sent home with a computer and only see their colleagues and managers in digital meetings? The purpose of this article is to examine employeesʼ experiences working in a home office, and whether alienation can be a useful concept to understand these experiences. We study alienation as a lack of autonomy and agency, as fragmented identity, a lack of meaningful social relationships with colleagues and a decreased meaning of work. Through 26 qualitative interviews with employees, we study how the home office impact the work organization, employeesʼ relationship to their work, the social relations at work and the relationship they have to the products of their labor. We find that the responsibility for setting working hours and carrying out tasks in the home office is largely individualized. This individualization of responsibility can be experienced as increased autonomy and flexibility for the employee. At the same time, there may be an alienation risk: feeling that one does not have sufficient agency to do a good job, that working time flows into leisure time and vice versa, the lack of a sense of community with others, and perceived meaninglessness in the job. The understanding of these experiences as alienation, rather than individual problems, shows that alienation can still be relevant for understanding challenges in todayʼs working life.

Balancing work and family in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: the role of work conditions and family-friendly policy

Purpose Work from home has become as regular as the traditional commuting system after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies have discussed the influence of working at home on the work-family interface. However, there is limited understanding of how diverse workforces manage their work-family issues with various family-friendly policies. This study aims to bridge this research gap by examining the collective influence of work conditions and family-friendly policies on work-family balance. Design/methodology/approach A survey experiment featuring two working conditions (work from home or commuting) x four family-friendly policies (household subsidy, family-friendly supervisor, financial profit, paid leave vs no policy) was approached based on 703 valid responses in China. Findings The results indicate that family-friendly policies are more effective under the work-from-home condition than the commuting condition, household subsidies and financial profits are considered more helpful for work-family balance under the work-from-home condition and employees' policy preferences depend on personal identity and work conditions, which help them maintain work and family issues concurrently. Originality/value This study explores the joint impact of work conditions and family-friendly policies from a situational perspective. This study indicated that professional organizations need to perform delicacy management considering policy preferences. Moreover, changing working arrangements help employees facilitate their work-family balance.

US Parents' Domestic Labor During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

It is important to assess the long-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for gender equality, but we know little about US parents' domestic arrangements beyond the early days of the pandemic or how simultaneous changes in employment, earnings, telework, gender ideologies, and care supports may have altered domestic arrangements. This study assesses changes in parents' domestic labor during the first year of the pandemic using fixed-effects regression on data from a longitudinal panel of 700 different-sex partnered US parents collected at three time points: March, April, and November 2020. Parents' divisions of housework and childcare became more equal early in the pandemic, but divisions of housework reverted toward pre-pandemic levels by Fall 2020 whereas fathers' shares of childcare remained elevated. Changes in parents' divisions of domestic labor were largely driven by changes in parents' labor force conditions, but shifts in gender ideology also mattered. Decreases in fathers' labor force participation and increases in telecommuting in April portended increases in fathers' shares of domestic tasks. As fathers increased their time in paid work and returned to in-person work by fall, their shares of domestic labor fell. Shifts toward more traditional gender ideologies were also associated with decreases in fathers' shares of childcare in Fall 2020. Overall, results point to remote work as a possible means for achieving greater gender equality in domestic labor among couples, but shifts toward traditional gender ideologies may suppress any gains stemming from supportive work-family policies. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11113-022-09735-1.

Childcare, Work, and Household Labor During a Pandemic: Evidence on Parents’ Preferences in the United States

By exacerbating a pre-existing crisis of childcare in the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many parents to renegotiate household arrangements. What shapes parents' preferences over different arrangements? In an online conjoint experiment, we assess how childcare availability, work status and earnings, and the intra-household division of labor shape heterosexual American parents' preferences over different situations. We find that while mothers and fathers equally value outside options for childcare, the lack of such options - a significant feature of the pandemic - does not significantly change their evaluations of other features of household arrangements. Parents' preferences over employment, earnings, and how to divide up household labor exhibit gendered patterns, which persist regardless of childcare availability. By illustrating the micro-foundations of household decision-making under constraints, our findings help to make sense of women's retrenchment from the labor market during the pandemic: a pattern which may have long-term economic and political consequences.

Trabajo docente en tiempos de pandemia: agudización de las desigualdades e intensificación de la tarea en la provincia de Buenos Aires

Este artículo es el resultado de una investigación sobre las condiciones y los condicionantes de la tarea docente en el nivel secundario de la provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina, durante la pandemia por la covid-19. El objetivo es analizar cómo se cruzan las desigualdades de género, tecnológicas y sociosanitarias en el quehacer educativo, en un contexto signado por la intensificación de la labor docente y la profundización de las distancias sociales. Consideramos el período comprendido entre marzo de 2020 y marzo de 2021, y analizamos las siguientes particularidades: las regulaciones oficiales, las condiciones laborales docentes, la composición y situación social del hogar de profesoras y profesores, los recursos tecnológicos disponibles y los soportes institucionales que condicionaron la labor pedagógica. Nos basamos en las normativas del período, la estadística oficial, y las encuestas y entrevistas abiertas a docentes de secundaria de cuatro municipios, que reflejan la heterogeneidad de esta provincia argentina. Entre los hallazgos sobresalen la intensificación de la labor de enseñar durante la pandemia y su particular impacto en el nivel secundario por la estructura del puesto de trabajo;en las docentes mujeres la situación se complejiza por la asimetría en el reparto de las tareas de cuidado. La emergencia del trabajo colectivo para afrontar estas condiciones se constituyó como alternativa y soporte a fin de superar el aislamiento.Alternate :This article is the result of an investigation into the conditions and determinants of teaching at the secondary level in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective is to analyze how gender, technological, and socio-health inequalities intersect in educational work, in a context marked by the intensification of teaching work and widening social gaps. We considered the period between March 2020 and March 2021, and analyzed the following particularities: official regulations, teachers' working conditions, the composition and social situation of teachers' households, technological resources available, and institutional support that conditioned pedagogical work. We studied the regulations of the period, official statistics, and surveys and open interviews with secondary school teachers in four municipalities, which reflect the heterogeneity of this Argentine province. Among the findings, we emphasize the intensification of the work of teaching during the pandemic and its particular impact on the secondary level, due to the structure of this job position;among female teachers, the situation became more complex due to asymmetry in the distribution of care work. Collective work emerged to confront these conditions, as an alternative and support mechanism to overcome isolation.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Birth Planning in Japan

Japan has one of the lowest fertility rates of developed countries. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus caused Japan's low fertility rate to further decrease. The purpose of this study was to empirically elucidate what family characteristics have suppressed Japanʼs birth rate during the spread of COVID-19 and its relevant prevention measures. This study investigated the effects of the pandemic on birth planning using data from a survey conducted in 2020 with individuals in Japan aged between 25 and 44 years with a spouse and at least one child. Multivariate analysis showed that men with a low annual income and women who are not in the labor force significantly postponed planned births. The higher the percentage of couples sharing housework and childcare was, the higher the motivation for both the husband and wife to have an additional child. These results suggest that the pandemic has particularly suppressed additional planned births of socially disadvantaged households such as low-income households and socially isolated households due to the stay-at-home policy. Under these circumstances, the sharing of housework and childcare by a couple is an important factor that motivates couples to have an additional child.