Can COVID-19 change the work culture at home?
According to S.Rukmini at LiveMint, the COVID-19 pandemic may be affecting social norms about household work and labor participation for men and women in India. The author cited an online survey conducted by Faculty Associate Sonalde Desai and Ravinder Kaur, Professor of Sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology, that found ". . .a large increase in the time women were spending on housework and childcare. From 55% of women doing the cooking before the lockdown, 79% were now doing the cooking, for instance. Since the sample is of individuals who are urban and well-off, most of the increase came from women substituting for the work that paid domestic workers had been doing for the household before COVID-19." At the same time, there is a significant increase in men taking on shared housework, which may be driven in large part by recently unemployed men contributing more to housework.