An unexpected upside to lockdown: men have discovered housework

In the days before the pandemic, Melissa, a Salt Lake City-based nurse, had cut back on her hours in an effort to balance the demands of her work, her husband Richard’s work, running the household and caring for their two young children. But once she began to care for Covid-19 patients, Richard, a sales rep for a large food distributor, had to not only find a way to do his job remotely, but to take charge of the children while she was working 12-hour shifts.

And when Katherine Cargill, an emergency room nurse in Washington DC, moved into an Airbnb to quarantine from her family, her husband went from the occasional “helper” around the house to being 100% in charge of everything, including caring for, educating and entertaining a five-year-old and two-year-old twins. He had to take a leave from work to manage it all. “He’ll say, ‘I just feel so tired all the time and I don’t know why,’” Cargill laughed. “I know why.”

These families are part of what could be a grand experiment in gender roles brought on by the disruptions of the global pandemic. With families under lockdown, men are doing more around the home, and experts suggest this could lead to a lasting change in gender norms.

Women make up 76% of healthcare workers – about 80% of nurses, and close to 90% of home and personal care aides. Many of them have been forced to stay away from their families, leading male partners to step up at home. Could the pandemic operate like exposure therapy and, over time, lead to greater gender equality?

It’s a question not just for the families of health workers. Partners of other essential workers have also had to take on more of the load at home. And with more men than ever forced to work remotely, many, like Cargill’s husband, are finally beginning to see just how much work goes into running a home and caregiving.

We are researchers who have spent the past year analyzing new data and reporting on men and their experiences with and attitudes toward caregiving. It is too early to say with certainty how the pandemic will change the balance in the long run. But a series of new studies indicate that while women continue to bear more of the demands at home, men are doing morethan they were before the pandemic. And that could lead to lasting change.That’s the conclusion of one study on US families, published early in the pandemic. And as the crisis has dragged on, other research out of Canada, Germany, Turkey and the Netherlands has found that, while they haven’t closed the gap with women, men are doing more domestic work during the pandemic than they did before it. “Across the board, whether it’s dishwashing, laundry, childcare, reading to kids, physical care, we’re seeing a universal movement toward more egalitarian sharing,” said Dan Carlson, a sociologist at the University of Utah and author of a study showing men doing more housework and childcare than before the pandemic.

Carlson and his co-authors found that the share of parents saying they shared housework relatively equally jumped from 26% before Covid-19 to 41% during the pandemic. Similarly, couples reporting sharing the care of young children equally climbed from 41% to 52%. “I know people are writing that the pandemic will be bad for feminism,” Carlson said, “but I think it’s an opportunity, honestly.”

Traditional gender roles – the notion that men should be bread