Gender inequality in paid and unpaid work during Covid-19 times

We employ real-time household data to study the impact of the pandemic lockdown on paid and unpaid work in Spain. We document large employment losses that affected more severely low-skilled workers and to some extent college educated women. We show that the pandemic resulted in an increase in the gender gap in total hours worked, including paid and unpaid work. This is due to the smaller decrease in paid work hours among women that was not compensated by a smaller increase in unpaid work. We also examine the impact of the lockdown on within-household specialization patterns. We find that while men slightly increased their participation in home production, the burden continued to be borne by women, irrespective of their labor market situation. This evidence suggests that traditional explanations cannot account for the unequal distribution of the domestic workload. Additional analysis supports gender norms as a plausible explanation for our findingsGraves and Fawaz acknowledge funding from the Fundacion Ramon Areces (18th Social Science National Competition) that made survey collection possible. Fawaz acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant PGC2018-097598). Graves acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant ECO2017-82882- R) and joint support from the Community of Madrid and UAM (grant SI1-PJI- 2019- 00326). Farré and González acknowledge financial support from the IZA Emergency Research Trust. Farré acknowledges the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant PID2019-104319RB- I00), Agaur (2020PANDE00076) and the Government of Catalonia (grant SGR2017-644). González acknowledges the financial support of ICREA Academi