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

ABSTRACT

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.