Gender and the pandemic: Associations between caregiving, working from home, personal and career outcomes for women and men

The coronavirus pandemic lockdowns have led to an increase of caregiving and household responsibilities for many employees while working from home. We aimed to investigate whether there was a gender imbalance in the division of household labour within families during the pandemic, and whether this imbalance was associated with gender differences in personal outcomes (work-family conflict, burnout) as well as career-related outcomes (career self-efficacy and aspirations). Participants were 240 heterosexual individuals with or without caregiving responsibilities who lived with a partner and worked from home during the pandemic. They completed self-report questionnaires and indicated the division of domestic tasks within their household, the extent to which they experienced burnout and work-family conflict, and their career aspirations and career self-efficacy. The findings showed a significant gender imbalance, such that female caregivers spent significantly less time on work compared to the other groups and significantly more time on caregiving compared to male caregivers during the lockdown. There was a significant direct effect of caregiving on career outcomes for women, such that the more caregiving women performed during the lockdown relative to other tasks, the more negative their self-reported career outcomes were. Among men, caregiving did not predict career outcomes. Overall, our study showed that the gender imbalance in distributions of caregiving duties during the pandemic is associated with negative personal and professional outcomes for women who are caregivers. Practical implications are discussed accounting for this gender imbalance in the context of the pandemic and its influence on wellbeing and career outcomes, particularly for heterosexual women.

Participation in Employment and Education of Young Maori Women: the Effects of Domestic Constraints and Settlement Patterns

<p>While the employment rate of women in New Zealand has trended upwards since the end of the Second World War, employment is still highly variable by ethnicity, age and region. One of the least engaged categories are young (15-24 years) Maori women. They have much lower employment rates than their Pakeha counterparts (42% and 64% respectively) and this is not offset by greater involvement in education. At 33%, Maori actually have much lower education rates than Pakeha women (46%). Instead young Maori women are more heavily involved in unpaid work. A very high 44% report spending time taking care of a child at home during the week, versus only 21% of their Pakeha counterparts. Although there is a general awareness of these differences, there has been no systematic enquiry into the origins of the low engagement of young Maori women or its contemporary manifestations. This thesis offers an integrated analysis of labour supply and time allocation of young Maori women, drawing on insights from economic theory and past studies of female Maori labour supply. It is among the first master's thesis to utilise unit record data from the New Zealand Census of Population and Dwellings. Access to data on individuals and their location is essential if geographers are going to be able to join other disciplines in modelling human behaviour. In this case I use the census records on individuals in order to test three hypotheses: Firstly, those young Maori women have greater exposure to household compositions which generate domestic responsibilities that compete with the devotion of time to paid employment. Secondly, that when Maori and Pakeha are both faced with these responsibilities, there is a stronger negative effect on the likelihood of a young Maori woman securing employment, relative to her Pakeha counterparts. Finally, that young Maori women are more likely to live in geographical areas that adversely affect their likelihood of being employed than their Pakeha equivalent. Access to the census has the benefit of including as variables the characteristics of the household in which young women are living. In doing so it extends the standard empirical models of female labour supply to include elements from the literature on child labour, household labour supply models in agricultural settings, as well as the analysis of pluri-activity, all of which model young women's behaviour in the context of the economic and social structure of the household. What I demonstrate is not that young Maori women's labour participation is any more sensitive than Pakeha to constraints which I take household structure to impose, but simply that labour constraining structures are themselves far more prevalent in the case of young Maori women. It is the greater demands such households impose on the need for child care, elderly care and help in the community that combine with the lower demand for the labour of young Maori women often in non-metropolitan settings which combine to generate the much higher market inactivity rates we see particularly among Maori women in their early twenties. Being able to demonstrate this point using individual records on virtually the full population of young Maori and Pakeha women is the major contribution of this thesis.</p>

Participation in Employment and Education of Young Maori Women: the Effects of Domestic Constraints and Settlement Patterns

<p>While the employment rate of women in New Zealand has trended upwards since the end of the Second World War, employment is still highly variable by ethnicity, age and region. One of the least engaged categories are young (15-24 years) Maori women. They have much lower employment rates than their Pakeha counterparts (42% and 64% respectively) and this is not offset by greater involvement in education. At 33%, Maori actually have much lower education rates than Pakeha women (46%). Instead young Maori women are more heavily involved in unpaid work. A very high 44% report spending time taking care of a child at home during the week, versus only 21% of their Pakeha counterparts. Although there is a general awareness of these differences, there has been no systematic enquiry into the origins of the low engagement of young Maori women or its contemporary manifestations. This thesis offers an integrated analysis of labour supply and time allocation of young Maori women, drawing on insights from economic theory and past studies of female Maori labour supply. It is among the first master's thesis to utilise unit record data from the New Zealand Census of Population and Dwellings. Access to data on individuals and their location is essential if geographers are going to be able to join other disciplines in modelling human behaviour. In this case I use the census records on individuals in order to test three hypotheses: Firstly, those young Maori women have greater exposure to household compositions which generate domestic responsibilities that compete with the devotion of time to paid employment. Secondly, that when Maori and Pakeha are both faced with these responsibilities, there is a stronger negative effect on the likelihood of a young Maori woman securing employment, relative to her Pakeha counterparts. Finally, that young Maori women are more likely to live in geographical areas that adversely affect their likelihood of being employed than their Pakeha equivalent. Access to the census has the benefit of including as variables the characteristics of the household in which young women are living. In doing so it extends the standard empirical models of female labour supply to include elements from the literature on child labour, household labour supply models in agricultural settings, as well as the analysis of pluri-activity, all of which model young women's behaviour in the context of the economic and social structure of the household. What I demonstrate is not that young Maori women's labour participation is any more sensitive than Pakeha to constraints which I take household structure to impose, but simply that labour constraining structures are themselves far more prevalent in the case of young Maori women. It is the greater demands such households impose on the need for child care, elderly care and help in the community that combine with the lower demand for the labour of young Maori women often in non-metropolitan settings which combine to generate the much higher market inactivity rates we see particularly among Maori women in their early twenties. Being able to demonstrate this point using individual records on virtually the full population of young Maori and Pakeha women is the major contribution of this thesis.</p>

Gendered Outcomes

This chapter reviews the quantitative, cross-nationally comparative literature investigating the effects of welfare states on gendered social landscapes in high-income OECD countries. It begins by reviewing the data, measures, and methodological approaches used in the literature. It then reviews research on the ‘effects’ of welfare states on gendered (a) labour market outcomes; (b) divisions of household labour and childcare; and (c) well-being. The authors conclude that welfare states play a key role in shaping gender inequality within the labour market and the home, with important consequences for well-being. Finally, the authors conclude with an assessment of limitations and prospects for future research.

Locking Down Gender Roles? A Time-Use Perspective on Gender Division of Household Labour during the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown in Belgium

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the division of household labour could continue to lock down or start to break gender roles. Using time-use data of n = 473 individuals collected during the lockdown restrictions in Belgium from March to May 2020, we analyse the gendered division of routine and non-routine household labour in absolute time use and relative shares. We compare against the Belgian time-use data of 2013 for the same time period ( n = 678 individuals). A time-demanding work and living situation associate with an increase in men’s time spent on household labour during the lockdown but not with a change in women’s time use. The gender gap closes in absolute time but not in relative shares of routine and non-routine household labour. The limited impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gender division of household labour indicates a temporal rather than a substantial change in gender roles.

Household Labour Migration and Farmers’ Access to Productive Agricultural Services: A Case Study from Chinese Provinces

Household labour migration experiences may have a staggering impact within developing countries, especially in dynamic societies like China, where labour migration is obvious. The present study’s objective is to investigate whether household labour migration contributes to the probability of farmers’ access to productive agricultural services. The study’s empirical setup is comprised of household survey data of 541 farmers in Shaanxi, Henan, and Sichuan provinces. The study proposes a counterfactual model to evaluate the average processing effect of an urban migrant with the help of the endogenous transformation of the Probit model. The results show that labour migration for work directly affects farmers’ access to productive agricultural services and indirectly affects farmers’ access to productive agricultural services through three channels: labour input, land transfers, and planting structure adjustments. The study further confirms that labour migration for work has a significant heterogeneity in the probability of obtaining productive agricultural services for farmers with or without non-agricultural income. Simultaneously, the labour migration area for work has significant heterogeneity in the probability of farmer households’ access to productive agricultural services. The government should extend support towards productive agriculture services. Agricultural demonstration services and on-hand training of migrant labour should be highlighted.

Effects of Migration Experience on Labour Income in Turkey

A significant number of migrants return to their home country every year, and these returnees with migration experience join the labour force. This study investigates the effect of migration experience on labour income applying regression analysis to data from the Household Labour Force Surveys of Turkey from 2009 to 2018. The findings confirm that migration experience has a positive impact on labour income in Turkey. Furthermore, the returnees earn more than the overall wage earners with the same education and skill levels. Additional findings show that women in Turkey earn less than men across all wage earners in the average, but that migration experience does not close the earnings gap between female and male returnees. Nevertheless, highly-educated and upskilled returnees contribute more to the economic growth of Turkey; so, the returnees are labour capital gains to improve the home country economy.

The Value of Value Capture

Gamification, roughly the use of game-like elements to motivate us to achieve practical ends “in the real world,” makes large promises. According to Jane McGonigal, gamification can save the world by channelling the amazing motivational power of gaming into pro-social causes ranging from alienation from our work to global resource scarcity and feeding the hungry (McGonigal 2011). Even much more modest aims like improving personal fitness or promoting a more equitable division of household labour provide some license for optimism about the ability of gamification to improve our lives in more humble but still worthwhile ways. On the other hand, Thi Nguyen has argued that there is a dark side to gamification: what he calls “value capture.” Roughly, gamification works in large part because it offers a simplified value structure – this is an essential part of its appeal and motivational power. However, especially in the context of gamification which exports these value schemes into our real-world lives, there is a risk that these overly simplistic models will displace our more rich, subtle values and that this will make our lives worse: this is value capture. The point is well-taken. The way in which number of steps taken per day can, for an avid user of “FitBit,” displace more accurate measurements of how one’s activities contribute to one’s fitness is a compelling example. If I become so obsessed with “getting my 10,000 steps” that I stop making time to go to the gym, jog or do my yoga/pilates then that is not a net gain. However, there is an important range of cases that Nguyen’s discussion ignores but which provide an important exception to his critique: value capture relative to behaviours that are addictive and destructive. Here I have in mind things like alcoholism, drug addiction, and gambling addiction. With these kinds of activities, value capture can not only be good but essential to a person’s well-being because (and not in spite of) of its displacement of the person’s more rich, subtle values. Interestingly, the point is not limited to cases of addictive behaviour, though they put the point in its most sharp relief. Any situation in which making rational decisions one by one can leave one worse off than “blindly” following a policy which is itself rational to adopt also turns out to illustrate the point, thus further expanding the role for value capture as itself a force for good. The more general point is that certain kinds of sequential choice problems carve out an important and theoretically interesting exception to Nguyen’s worries about value capture. In these kinds of choice contexts, value capture not only does not make our lives go worse, it may be essential to making our lives go better.

Juxtaposing The Great Indian Kitchen and the Kudumbashree: Women, Work and Agency in Kerala

The recent Malayalam film ‘The great Indian kitchen’ invoked debate in Kerala on women’s unpaid work in the house. Taking off from this film, this commentary draws on ethnographic research with women participating in the Kudumbashree, a women’s empowerment programme in Kerala, to engage with questions of paid work, household labour and care arrangements within the household. While the film depicts the struggles of a newly wedded young woman in her in-laws’ house and how she leaves the marriage to follow her dreams, this article shifts the focus to the tactics and strategies used by women in their 40s and 50s who remain within the family fold. We look at the experiences of these women who negotiate work and care arrangements to meet their needs. In doing so, we seek to understand what these strategies say about the conceptualisation of women’s agency and independence, particularly in South Asian contexts.