Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the already existing gender inequalities with substantial implications on women. With the closure of offices and educational institutions, and the emerging norm of work from home and online education, along with the lack of services of domestic worker, the need to perform unpaid chores in the household has increased. Simultaneously, the requirements of social distancing and sanitization have created new unpaid chores. Owing to the sexual division of labour, and gendered roles and social norms of performing domestic and care work, the burden of unpaid work falls disproportionately on women. In this context, the objective of the paper is to study the impact of COVID-19 on time spent on unpaid work and the underlying gender differences in the urban centres in India. Specifically, the paper will do a comparative analysis of the gender differences in time spent on unpaid work before and during the lockdown, and analyse the reasons for the same.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc across the world and brought the world to a standstill with unprecedented changes in our society and economy
Unemployed women witness the highest decrease of 26 percentage points in the 29–49 h/ week interval during the lockdown and highest increase of 30.5 percentage points for those who spent more than 70 h/week on unpaid work
This paper highlights the impact of COVID-19 on gender equality, on the burden of unpaid work for women
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc across the world and brought the world to a standstill with unprecedented changes in our society and economy. As has been the case, the novel coronavirus spread with such a speed and intensity across the world due to the interconnectedness of the globalized world that most countries imposed temporary shutdowns as a strategy to contain its spread. The impacts of the lockdown have been disruptive and changed the way in which humans perform. Gender Issues (2021) 38:395–419 their daily activities and go about their routine lives. Such impact has not been the same across all social groups, with the most vulnerable and marginalized groups being affected differently due to the already existing social inequalities [13]. The lockdown has widened the existing gender inequalities and limited the opportunities for women [25, 28]
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