Abstract
Objective: To contribute to the discussion about the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender (in)equality.
 Background: We focus on a core aspect of gender (in)equality in intimate relationships, namely couples’ division of housework and childcare, and whether this has changed during the Corona crisis.
 Method: Our descriptive analysis is based on pre-release data from the German Family Panel (pairfam; Wave 12) and its supplementary Corona web-survey (n=3,108).
 Results: We observe no fundamental changes in established aggregate-level patterns of couples’ division of labor, but some shift towards the extremes ('traditional' and 'role reversal') of the distribution. Regarding changes within couples, there is an almost equal split between those in which the female partner’s share in housework and childcare increased and those in which it decreased. Particularly in previously more egalitarian arrangements, a substantial proportion of women is now more likely to be primarily responsible for everything. If male partners increased their relative contribution to housework and childcare, they rarely moved beyond the threshold of an equal split. Changes in employment hours were associated with adaptations of men's, but not women's, relative contribution to domestic and family responsibilities.
 Conclusion: Our findings neither support the notion of a 'patriarchal pandemic', nor do they indicate that the Corona crisis might have fostered macro-level trends of gender convergence. We rather observe heterogeneous responses of couples to the 'Corona shock'.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit families across the world, affecting all family members and almost every aspect of family life
If male partners increased their relative contribution to housework and childcare, they rarely moved beyond the threshold of an equal split
Using data from a supplementary web-survey conducted as part of the German Family Panel, the present study’s focus is on a core aspect of genderequality in intimate relationships, namely couples’ division of housework and childcare, and whether this has changed during the Corona crisis of 2020
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit families across the world, affecting all family members and almost every aspect of family life. We thereby contribute to the discussion about the potential impact of COVID-19 on gender (in)equality (e.g., Alon et al 2020; Kohlrausch & Zucco 2020), responding to concerns that the virological pandemic might have triggered a ‘patriarchal pandemic’ (Chemaly 2020; see Allmendinger 2020) This would constitute a backlash in a situation that – according to recent ‘pre-crisis’ analyses for Germany and other Western societies – has been characterized by a macro-level trend of gender convergence in housework time (e.g., Leopold et al 2018; Skopek & Leopold 2019; see Altintas & Sullivan 2016). Whereas the time parents’ spent on childcare slightly increased in Germany during the early 2000s, the gender gap did not decline (Schulz & Engelhardt 2017; but see Samtleben et al 2020)
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