Revisiting Gender Inequality in Housework during the COVID-19 Pandemic 2019-2022: Variations by Parental Status

How did gender inequality in housework change during the COVID-19 pandemic? A growing international work answered this question by comparing parents in 2020 to 2019, showing mixed evidence. We provide new evidence from couples living with and without children and across a longer time frame. Using high-quality, nationally representative time dairy data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), we describe average time in total, routine, and non-routine housework among dual-earner couples from 2019 to 2022. We found an overall increase in housework time in 2020. Two new findings emerged. First, from 2019 to 2020, there was an exacerbation in gender housework gap among couples living without children, such that women increased approximately half-an-hour more housework than men daily. The gender housework gap among parents however remained similar. Second, such trends were relatively short-term and reversed in 2021 and 2022. We provide short explanations and call for more studies to use national time diary data to intentionally incorporate family diversity into studying the gendered consequences of disruptive events in the longer term.