European couples’ division of domestic labor: The role of work from home and gender

Olga Leshchenko , Vienna Institute of Demography
Caroline Berghammer, Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences

The rise of working from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic has been seen as both an opportunity and a risk: it may promote gender equality by allowing women to balance paid and unpaid work better and encouraging men’s involvement in domestic tasks, but it may also reinforce inequality if women increase their share of unpaid labor while men focus more on paid work. The mixed findings in the literature may reflect differences in national contexts, as most studies rely on single-country analyses. This study examines how WFH is associated with the division of housework and childcare among dual-earner couples in nine European countries. It advances previous research in three ways. First, it looks at the post-pandemic period. Second, it focuses on couple-level WFH arrangements, capturing whether one, both, or neither partner works from home. Third, it considers both cross-national variation and individual gender role attitudes, recognizing that national and cultural contexts shape how WFH shapes the division of labor. Using the Generations and Gender Survey data (2023), we analyze dual-earner couples aged 25–59 with (and without) children under 18. Preliminary results show that the division of childcare is more unequal when only she is WFH, and more equal when only he is WFH. Housework division is more equal when both partners WFH, but only if he holds egalitarian attitudes towards gender roles. When she WFH and has traditional attitudes, the division of housework is more unequal.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 45. Family, Housework and Time Use