Gendered Division of Labour during a Nationwide COVID-19 Lockdown: Implications for Relationship Problems and Satisfaction
COVID-19 lockdowns have required many working parents to balance domestic and paid labour while confined at home. Are women and men equally sharing the workload? Are inequities in the division of labour compromising relationships? Leveraging a pre-pandemic longitudinal study of couples with young children, we examine gender differences in the division and impact of domestic and paid labour during a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown (N = 157 dyads). Women took on more of the parenting and housework, whereas men engaged in more paid work and personal time, during the lockdown. Couple members agreed that women’s share of parenting, housework and personal time was unfair, but this did not protect women burdened with an inequitable share of domestic labour from experiencing detrimental relationship outcomes. A greater, and more unfair, share of parenting, housework and personal time predicted residual increases in relationship problems and decreases in relationship satisfaction for women. Men who were not working full-time or were the primary caregiver also experienced negative relationship outcomes when they did more housework and parenting. These results substantiate concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic may undermine advances toward gender equality by reinforcing inequitable divisions of labour, thereby damaging women’s relationship wellbeing.