Care, often recognized as essential to human existence, plays a critical role in the functioning of the economic and social system (Stone, 2000). However, the distribution of care provision, including both paid and unpaid house and care work, is characterized by significant gender disparities, and represents one of the primary sources of gender inequality (Moos, 2021). According to the International Labor Organization, women dedicate an average of 4 hours and 25 minutes per day to unpaid care work, while men allocate only about 1 hour and 23 minutes (ILO, 2019). This gap widens by 20% in households with children under the age of five (BID, 2020), leading, among other things, to lower female participation in the paid economy (Power, 2020).
Several public policies have intended to provide external solutions to the caregiving responsibility faced chiefly by women at the household level, such as extended school hours and increased nursery coverage. These policies have had positive spillover effects on women's labor outcomes, increasing participation in the paid economy, formality, wages and hours worked (Berthelon et al., 2020; Cascio, 2009; Contreras & Plaza, 2010; Fitzpatrick, 2012; Goux & Maurin, 2010; Martínez A. & Perticará, 2017; Nollenberger & Rodríguez-Planas, 2015). However, in the event of shocks that restrict the availability of external care networks, women are the ones most affected. This was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the closure of all educational establishments, deactivating formal care networks in many countries, particularly in Latin America where most schools were closed for the entire academic year during the health crisis (UNICEF, 2021). With different degrees of intensity, the measures to contain the spread of the virus, such as school closures, social distancing and lockdowns, widened the gender gap against women in many countries since mothers were more likely than fathers to cut down on their hours of paid work or make scheduled adjustments to accommodate an increased load of care work (Del Boca et al., 2020; İlkkaracan & Memiş, 2021; McMunn et al., 2020; Xue & McMunn, 2021). Despite policy efforts, there is still little clarity around the specific impact of these policies on structural changes in gender roles, which have historically placed greater responsibility on women in housework and care tasks. Thus, the COVID 19 pandemic offers a unique possibility to investigate the gender distribution of care and housework when all external care networks, including paid external help, are not available. Due to a lack of pandemic data, this topic has been less studied in developing countries such as Chile.
This study aims to examine whether the COVID-19 lockdowns in Chile created an opportunity for heterosexual families with and without children to establish more egalitarian and nonnormative dynamics, by rearranging paid and unpaid work. It also considers the possibility that the confinement of families to the home may have further reinforced gendered divisions of labor. These empirical questions warrant careful investigation. Additionally important is the fact that time-allocation patterns observed during quarantine may persist over time, particularly since we have noticed that these more flexible forms of work have been maintained post-pandemic in many jobs. Furthermore, studying family behavior offers an opportunity to test the effectiveness of bargaining, time availability, and gender-based mechanisms in a context where quick and unexpected negotiations are prompted by an external shock.
From a mainstream economic perspective, the division of labor within couples and the resulting gender inequality have traditionally been associated with the relative resources of each partner. These resources grant individuals the power to negotiate and steer clear of undesirable tasks, ultimately shaping the equilibrium within the household (Lundberg & Pollak, 1996). Moreover, the allocation of time to domestic work has been connected to the time availability and constraints that individuals face, particularly in relation to their paid work (Hiller, 1984). However, feminist economists have raised significant concerns about the gender-neutral nature of negotiation and decision-making processes. They have highlighted the influential role of internalized gender norms, which dictate societal expectations regarding desirable behaviors for both women and men (Agarwal, 1997; Pearse & Connell, 2016).
To investigate whether women were most affected by sanitary measures to contain the pandemic and what factors influence the distribution of unpaid housework, this research team developed and conducted the first National Home Care Survey (ENCIC) in Chile. A unique survey, representative of the Chilean population, that collected data on household members responsible for care work and domestic tasks throughout 2020. The study examines the gender distribution of unpaid labor during the COVID-19 confinement in different types of families, i.e., families without children, with children but no partner and nuclear families (mother, father and children) and families with different working arrangements in terms of types of work (paid and unpaid), working hours (full-time/part-time) and work modality (remote, in-person, shifts). As we are interested in exploring how families balance paid and unpaid workloads, as well as power dynamics in negotiating unpaid labor, we estimate whether a paid occupation influences a person’s probability of being responsible for carrying out the most demanding household chores and care shifts, and if this effect is the same for both genders. In addition, we estimate whether having more economic power really allows said earner to ‘negotiate’ a lower unpaid domestic workload and whether that negotiation power is equal for men and women.
The novelty of this work and our contribution to the literature is three-fold. First, our approach diverges from conventional economic studies on care provision that rely on time-use surveys. While traditional surveys ask individuals to report the amount of time allocated to various domestic tasks, including care work, this study goes beyond by recognizing that many household activities, particularly care work, are performed concurrently. For instance, tasks like cooking may be carried out while simultaneously tending to young children or working remotely while supervising online schooling. It can thus be argued that time use surveys may underestimate the actual time dedicated to caregiving and domestic work. Importantly, this study adopts a gendered perspective. Regardless of whether families employ external assistance, the primary responsibility for care and domestic work typically falls on women, which we consider a significant and relevant aspect to analyze. This represents an invisible burden for women that is not adequately captured by standard time use surveys. Moreover, traditional surveys can be misleading if they fail to reflect that men may spend more time than women on performing similar domestic activities, predominantly engaging in tasks considered "simpler" or "less unpleasant", such as taking out the garbage or playing with children (Criado Pérez, 2019; Neetha, 2010). Furthermore, there are notable differences in the types of childcare activities undertaken by men and women, with mothers often handling more time-sensitive routines and repetitive tasks like diaper changing, feeding, and dressing, while also engaging in multitasking (Chambers & Gracia, 2021). Second, this study contributes to the recent literature investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the overload of unpaid work on women. Most studies focus on developed countries, estimating that mothers with young children are the ones that most likely suffer and carry the burden of the excess of housework regardless of the working arrangement of their partners (Collins et al., 2021; Del Boca et al., 2020; Pabilonia & Vernon, 2023; Seiz, 2021). However, empirical evidence in developing countries is scarce. Third, we contribute to the literature that provides empirical evidence on economic theories that try to explain the unequal distribution of domestic and care work, in the context of unexpected events but whose influence may last over time (McMunn et al., 2020; Pabilonia & Vernon, 2023; Seiz, 2021). A topic that has also been explored sparsely in less developed countries.
Chile is an interesting case study, a mid-to-high-income country with a market-centered economy which, in the last 30 years, has experienced rapid demographic, structural, and cultural changes. There was a rapid increase in Chilean women’s labor force participation rate during the 1990s and 2000s. However, this is still low and has stalled since 2010 —despite a significant fertility decline and an expansion of women’s education. While many structural changes are occurring in Chile, traditional gender norms around caregiving remain and are stronger than in developed countries (Inglehart et al., 2014). Like other Latin American and some East Asian countries, Chile has strong norms of male-household head and female-caregiver roles (Contreras & Plaza, 2010; Staab, 2012), that together with increased female education and employment, can lead to exceptionally high levels of tension in balancing work and family (Anderson & Kohler, 2015).
This article is structured as follows: the next section presents the research’s theoretical framework, an overview of mainstream theories used to explain the persistence of gender inequalities related to the distribution of unpaid care and housework. The third section presents the methodology used in the application of the ENCIC care survey. A fourth section presents the study’s descriptive statistics and results. The fifth and final section contains an analysis and discussion of the findings and conclusions.