Remote Work Solidifies Traditional Roles: New Causal Evidence on Gender Inequality Post-Covid
Alipour: "Does Remote Work Reinforce Gender Gaps in (Un)Paid Labor?" CRC Discussion Paper No. 542
The rapid, Covid-induced transition to widespread working from home (WFH) represented a defining shift in the modern labor market. While some hoped this flexibility might foster greater gender equality by enabling women’s greater labor market participation and lowering barriers to men’s household involvement, new causal evidence from the German Socioeconomic Panel suggests that the opposite is true.
Drawing on an instrumental variable approach that uses job WFH feasibility in 2019 to estimate the effects of realized remote work by 2022, Jean-Victor Alipour (LMU Munich, Project B10) finds that the widespread adoption of WFH reinforces gender disparities in both paid and unpaid labor.
The results reveal pronounced gender asymmetries in time use. For women, an additional hour of WFH per weekday significantly increases time spent on domestic work by 0.10 hours and leisure (which includes sleep) by 0.12 hours. This reallocation is mirrored by a reduction in time dedicated to job-related activities, suggesting fewer paid hours worked, alongside commuting time savings. Women who work from home at least once per week reduce their paid hours by 8%, illustrating reduced participation at the intensive margin, even as WFH appears to promote labor force attachment at the extensive margin.
Men, by contrast, only show small and largely insignificant time-use responses to remote work. Men’s time allocation is barely affected because WFH opportunities prompted them to move to larger homes farther afield, offsetting time saved from reduced commuting.
Crucially, within heterosexual couples, WFH intensifies preexisting gender gaps. For the average couple, WFH widens the gender gap in caregiving by 22% and the gap in paid hours by 18% relative to 2019. This reinforcement of traditional roles is driven by three identified mechanisms: First, individuals with more conservative gender norms use WFH to reinforce traditional divisions of labor. Second, men generally possess greater economic bargaining power, allowing them to better shield time for paid work. Third, greater childcare demands disproportionately borne by women pull their time toward unpaid labor. These findings show that while WFH offers individual autonomy, its interaction with existing norms and unequal bargaining power amplifies gender inequality, rather than mitigating it.
Link (pdf): Does Remote Work Reinforce Gender Gaps in (Un)Paid Labor?
