Turning back the clock: Beliefs about gender roles during lockdown

Abstract

We study the impact of lockdown measures on beliefs about gender roles. We collect data from a representative sample of 1000 individuals in France during the first COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. To measure beliefs about gender roles, we use questions from the 2018 wave of the European Values Study, and match respondents from the two surveys to compare beliefs before and during lockdown. We find evidence that the lockdown period was associated with a shift towards more traditional beliefs about gender roles. The effects are concentrated among men from the most time-constrained households and from households where bargaining with a partner over sharing responsibility for household production was likely to be an issue. Finally, we find correlational evidence that beliefs in equal gender roles increase with household income. Overall, our results suggest that men are more likely to hold egalitarian beliefs about gender roles when these beliefs are not costly for them.