1 00:00:00,830 --> 00:00:15,230 Everyone, and welcome back to this sixth session in the joint series of the of Strategic Policy and the Smith School on the Economics of Kervin 19, 2 00:00:15,230 --> 00:00:18,440 we've covered a number of issues so far in this series, 3 00:00:18,440 --> 00:00:26,840 ranging from globalised trade to regional finance to macro coordination with the effects of the pandemic on sub-Saharan Africa. 4 00:00:26,840 --> 00:00:31,630 And then in the most recent session, thankfully chaired by the former director of the Martin School, 5 00:00:31,630 --> 00:00:35,900 who stepped infamy in short notice on supply chain and demand shock. 6 00:00:35,900 --> 00:00:40,250 So thank you. In Golden Ray of. Very great. You could do it for me. 7 00:00:40,250 --> 00:00:50,000 Today we have a real treat for you. We are looking at baby steps, the gender division of child care during the COGAT 19 pandemic. 8 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:54,410 And we have the experts with us to talk about this question. 9 00:00:54,410 --> 00:00:59,450 Professor Sarah Smith, Process Presbury of the School of Economics at Bristol. 10 00:00:59,450 --> 00:01:08,180 She has an Oxford heritage, having done PPA and specialise in politics, actually, and spent some time in a political consultancy before. 11 00:01:08,180 --> 00:01:18,170 Like many of us seeing the light and moving to economics, you then did a master's the A.S.A.P. at UCL and spent some time at the Institute for Fiscal 12 00:01:18,170 --> 00:01:22,880 Studies and was previously the chair of the Royal Economics Society's Women's Committee. 13 00:01:22,880 --> 00:01:29,350 And with her, her co-author in their joint paper in the Oxford Review is Professor Data Cydia, 14 00:01:29,350 --> 00:01:36,800 who is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at UCL and co-director of the UCL Centre of Time Use Research. 15 00:01:36,800 --> 00:01:41,090 She's held positions at Queen Mary at Oxford and the Congressional Budget Office in 16 00:01:41,090 --> 00:01:48,920 Washington after APHC in Brown in family and population economics and econometrics. 17 00:01:48,920 --> 00:01:53,030 And she's currently the chair of the Royal Economics Society's Women's Committee. 18 00:01:53,030 --> 00:01:57,590 So we really have the full force. With us today, which is wonderful. 19 00:01:57,590 --> 00:02:04,580 And Almudena and Sarah are going to tell you about wonderful natural experiment. 20 00:02:04,580 --> 00:02:06,530 Now, economists love natural experiments. 21 00:02:06,530 --> 00:02:14,330 So in a sense, because, you know, the KOVA 19 is giving us these research opportunities that we wouldn't have otherwise had. 22 00:02:14,330 --> 00:02:23,150 So that's the good bit. The bad bit is that it's also depriving many women of opportunities that they would have otherwise had. 23 00:02:23,150 --> 00:02:25,850 So that's the finding of the paper as we get to in a moment. 24 00:02:25,850 --> 00:02:31,760 What they what they've done is cleverly use the impact of the pandemic to have a deeper understanding, 25 00:02:31,760 --> 00:02:38,550 the division of home labour, using data from on the daily lives of people across the UK with families under Chapter 12. 26 00:02:38,550 --> 00:02:42,530 And I'm one of those families with three children under 12. 27 00:02:42,530 --> 00:02:48,350 And perhaps somewhat ironically, it's my wife who's looking out now while I'm here talking to you. 28 00:02:48,350 --> 00:02:52,520 But that's it for my introductory remarks while I'm already on the back foot. 29 00:02:52,520 --> 00:02:56,560 And I will hand over to Sarah to present the findings of the paper. 30 00:02:56,560 --> 00:02:59,910 So thank you. Thank you very much, Cameron. So, yeah. 31 00:02:59,910 --> 00:03:05,780 So in the in the traditional sort of academic seminar, I'm afraid I'm gonna get some sleep. 32 00:03:05,780 --> 00:03:12,050 I can get them to age. Let's see how I get on with sharing my screen just to trunk's. 33 00:03:12,050 --> 00:03:25,850 So I just will. Screw the main results first, if that's okay, and then open it up for questions. 34 00:03:25,850 --> 00:03:30,770 That's terrific. That's wacky. That's what I said. 35 00:03:30,770 --> 00:03:32,930 So what were we looking at? 36 00:03:32,930 --> 00:03:41,390 So what the Kovic pandemic represents, it was a major shock both to the demand side and the supply side, home and child care. 37 00:03:41,390 --> 00:03:48,810 So there was a massive increase in demand with the closure of schools and nurseries and other forms of child care. 38 00:03:48,810 --> 00:03:56,270 But there was also an increase in supply. As you know, many people were put onto furlough and some lost that job. 39 00:03:56,270 --> 00:04:02,210 So what we were interested in was seeing what the combined impact of both of these events were. 40 00:04:02,210 --> 00:04:08,360 We thought this was a really interesting opportunity to see whether traditional patterns of division of 41 00:04:08,360 --> 00:04:15,440 child care carried drivel or whether there might be a disruption that we might see new patterns emerging. 42 00:04:15,440 --> 00:04:22,160 So we were interested in finding out what was happening in the immediate aftermath of the COVA pandemic and the lockdown. 43 00:04:22,160 --> 00:04:28,230 So we commissioned a survey data from Ipsos MORI as part of that omnibus survey. 44 00:04:28,230 --> 00:04:33,660 The analysis we're going to present focuses mainly on heterosexual couples with young children, 45 00:04:33,660 --> 00:04:40,460 with fine young children as being less than or equal to twelve. So what did we find? 46 00:04:40,460 --> 00:04:51,170 So, you know, obviously many people doing lockdown with kind of kept inside their homes and within homes of families with young children. 47 00:04:51,170 --> 00:04:57,470 Essentially, there was a huge translation and what they were having to do and we were finding know, not surprisingly, 48 00:04:57,470 --> 00:05:02,930 the families with young children were basically doing the equivalent of an additional working week in terms of childcare. 49 00:05:02,930 --> 00:05:11,010 I mean, the sheer volume of childcare, the additional childcare the families with young children face was really quite staggering. 50 00:05:11,010 --> 00:05:14,960 And, you know, remember, many of these families were still working, working from home. 51 00:05:14,960 --> 00:05:20,390 And in some cases of also trying to juggle kind of working at their normal places of work. 52 00:05:20,390 --> 00:05:28,760 What we found was that traditional divisions of childcare were largely kind of carried over onto this additional burden of childcare. 53 00:05:28,760 --> 00:05:33,800 So what we found was that women have done by far the greatest share of this additional childcare. 54 00:05:33,800 --> 00:05:43,100 So they did on average, around 63 percent. So that's not to say that men weren't stepping up and doing some childcare. 55 00:05:43,100 --> 00:05:47,150 In fact, you know, they increased the amount of childcare that they did. 56 00:05:47,150 --> 00:05:55,730 But what we found and I'll show you in a minute, the Parsons men's childcare time is much more sensitive to their employment than it is for women. 57 00:05:55,730 --> 00:06:04,250 So in a sense, what you had was this big increase in demand for childcare, which remember meeting the supply side, disruptions were affecting the men. 58 00:06:04,250 --> 00:06:09,260 But the demand side burden was mainly for me falling on the women also. 59 00:06:09,260 --> 00:06:15,080 So we didn't look at this. But, you know, there've been a number of studies sort of focussing on what's been happening to childcare. 60 00:06:15,080 --> 00:06:20,150 So we know from other studies that men often specialise in certain types of childcare activities, 61 00:06:20,150 --> 00:06:24,620 focussing a bit more education in structured play rather than general care. 62 00:06:24,620 --> 00:06:30,440 And also, in terms of housework, they tends to grocery shopping rather than sort of general cleaning. 63 00:06:30,440 --> 00:06:34,070 So, yeah, so some men were doing more, but it was kind of a little bit specialised. 64 00:06:34,070 --> 00:06:37,010 And it was really very much linked to whether they were working or not. 65 00:06:37,010 --> 00:06:41,660 Whereas women were doing more, kind of like irrespective of whether they're working. 66 00:06:41,660 --> 00:06:42,890 So I think you can say, you know, 67 00:06:42,890 --> 00:06:51,140 we've had a lot in the aftermath of Kavis and increased working from home that we're going to see transformations in the way people work. 68 00:06:51,140 --> 00:06:51,910 I think, you know, 69 00:06:51,910 --> 00:06:59,900 the takeaway from looking at what was happening in the media aftermath in terms of cleavage is it was an old way of dividing childcare. 70 00:06:59,900 --> 00:07:07,630 There was nothing new about essentially the division of childcare during the course of the pandemic. 71 00:07:07,630 --> 00:07:13,390 There's also evidence that women have taken a worst economic hit than men during the 72 00:07:13,390 --> 00:07:21,130 recession and that the economic disruption caused by Kovik and the subsequent lockdown. 73 00:07:21,130 --> 00:07:30,010 This is very different to what happens happened in past recessions, where in past recessions, it's often been men who've taken the worst economic hit. 74 00:07:30,010 --> 00:07:38,650 But actually in this in this case, it's women. We found that women were five percentage points more likely than men not to be working. 75 00:07:38,650 --> 00:07:43,480 So either on furlough or actually having left employment altogether. 76 00:07:43,480 --> 00:07:50,520 Amongst women with young children, there's a great to get a 10 percentage point gap between women with young children and men with young children. 77 00:07:50,520 --> 00:07:59,980 Those are the findings from our study. But they mirror almost exactly the findings from other studies of estimates of the same gender differences. 78 00:07:59,980 --> 00:08:04,900 So women work in sectors that were hard to hit. So retail and leisure. 79 00:08:04,900 --> 00:08:09,760 So we know those at the sector and hospitality. Those are the sectors which most affected by knocked down. 80 00:08:09,760 --> 00:08:15,430 But this isn't the full story in terms of understanding why women were more likely not to be working. 81 00:08:15,430 --> 00:08:20,290 In fact, I think women were not working, partly because of the childcare that they had to do. 82 00:08:20,290 --> 00:08:21,280 So they're not. 83 00:08:21,280 --> 00:08:28,570 One of the nice things about our study was we able to track women from what they were doing before cosied to what they were doing after. 84 00:08:28,570 --> 00:08:33,370 And those women who pre-K we did a higher share of childcare were more likely to be not working. 85 00:08:33,370 --> 00:08:40,870 So in a sense, they they there were some indigeneity or some choice in terms of whether they were working or not. 86 00:08:40,870 --> 00:08:45,640 Other studies have also found we just looked at employment as a sort of binary outcome. 87 00:08:45,640 --> 00:08:49,780 Other studies have found that women have reduced their hours to accommodate childcare. 88 00:08:49,780 --> 00:08:55,670 So that's also going to add to the economic hit that they've faced. 89 00:08:55,670 --> 00:09:01,400 So, as I said, women have been juggling work and childcare much more than men. 90 00:09:01,400 --> 00:09:09,380 So these figures show the kind of number of additional hours done by men and women, depending on sort of in the left hand side, 91 00:09:09,380 --> 00:09:15,140 sort of your own employment status and then the right hand side, your partner's employment status. 92 00:09:15,140 --> 00:09:17,270 So what you can see is that, first of all, 93 00:09:17,270 --> 00:09:23,870 the amounts of additional childcare being done by women is greater than the amounts of additional childcare being done by men. 94 00:09:23,870 --> 00:09:29,470 And second, the you know, there's less variation in those bars for women than there is a man. 95 00:09:29,470 --> 00:09:34,310 So this idea that, yes, men are increasing, but it's mainly when they're not working. 96 00:09:34,310 --> 00:09:37,910 So when they've had this sort of, you know, economic shock. 97 00:09:37,910 --> 00:09:43,490 Whereas for women, they're typically doing large amounts of additional childcare even when they're working. 98 00:09:43,490 --> 00:09:51,590 Hence the kind of reduction in hours. And also, you know, an increase in the amount of juggling that they do. 99 00:09:51,590 --> 00:09:55,130 So I know that the first study, actually, Almudena, is also been involved in that. 100 00:09:55,130 --> 00:09:59,480 And she can tell you more about sort of the apparent ISIS study. 101 00:09:59,480 --> 00:10:06,650 But they looked at time use data where you can look at sort of different activities done within discrete windows during the day. 102 00:10:06,650 --> 00:10:15,110 And they're finding was that for every one hour of uninterrupted work time, women were enjoying certain joy use, 103 00:10:15,110 --> 00:10:23,120 enjoying advisedly, but for every one hour under-report an uninterrupted worked women had men had three hours. 104 00:10:23,120 --> 00:10:31,100 So this idea, I think, you know, coming from the data is that women are really juggling a lot more and having to combine work and childcare sort of, 105 00:10:31,100 --> 00:10:36,140 you know, hour by hour to a greater extent than men men were. 106 00:10:36,140 --> 00:10:42,410 So why does this matter? Well, I think there are two kinds of issues of concern. 107 00:10:42,410 --> 00:10:48,110 So first of all, as you know, all this juggling, all this extra childcare is a huge strain for parents. 108 00:10:48,110 --> 00:10:55,290 You know, I think I can imagine it facing an additional work equivalent of a working week in terms of hours childcare. 109 00:10:55,290 --> 00:10:59,390 There's little downtime for parents of young children. 110 00:10:59,390 --> 00:11:05,150 So, again, you know, if I study Pre Lockdown's 70 percent of parents reporting some leisure time at seven o'clock, 111 00:11:05,150 --> 00:11:12,870 compared with only 40 percent during lockdown. So there's really no break. And obviously, you know, you're all in the real lookdown phase. 112 00:11:12,870 --> 00:11:19,190 Everyone was not allowed out either. So a huge, huge strain on people. 113 00:11:19,190 --> 00:11:23,590 And we know that women's mental health has deteriorated twice as much as men's health. 114 00:11:23,590 --> 00:11:28,400 You know, during during the pandemic and since since the lockdown period. 115 00:11:28,400 --> 00:11:37,430 So I think, you know, that's in itself. It suggests that this additional child care and the way it was divided is, you know, is a matter of concern. 116 00:11:37,430 --> 00:11:43,670 And then the other issue, of course, slightly longer term is the possible implications for the gender pay gap. 117 00:11:43,670 --> 00:11:46,880 So women are currently paid around 20 percent less than men. 118 00:11:46,880 --> 00:11:54,680 And we know from other research that childcare is probably the most significant single factor in terms of driving the gender pay gap. 119 00:11:54,680 --> 00:11:59,330 So the gender pay gap really kind of becomes more pronounced after the arrival of 120 00:11:59,330 --> 00:12:05,300 children because women are sort of factoring children into their employment choices. 121 00:12:05,300 --> 00:12:12,350 So we know gender pay gap reporting, which the government introduced last year and two years ago, is currently suspended. 122 00:12:12,350 --> 00:12:16,190 So, you know, we don't know the immediate impacts of any of these measures. 123 00:12:16,190 --> 00:12:23,870 It'll be interesting to see, you know, what happens when a gender pay gap reporting is resumed. 124 00:12:23,870 --> 00:12:26,750 So you may think it's kind of, you know, this is only temporary. 125 00:12:26,750 --> 00:12:33,380 You know, hopefully at some point, you know, we may know schools have reopened, nurseries have reopened, 126 00:12:33,380 --> 00:12:40,670 and it will this additional childcare is now not being required to be provided in the home. 127 00:12:40,670 --> 00:12:46,670 I think it's you know, even if it were only temporary, there are likely to be permanent effects arising. 128 00:12:46,670 --> 00:12:51,530 So, you know, looking very close to home in academia. 129 00:12:51,530 --> 00:13:03,830 So one very measurable impact of the additional burden of childcare on women compared to men has been a reduction in the share of new working papers. 130 00:13:03,830 --> 00:13:08,000 You know, preprint publications coming from women vs. men. 131 00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:14,500 So some details, you know, it's a detailed study of, you know, the the the publications of the new research that's coming out. 132 00:13:14,500 --> 00:13:19,070 The share of new work on Kofod 19 for women is particularly low. 133 00:13:19,070 --> 00:13:25,400 And so if you're not getting the research done, that's going to feature, you know, and not getting any papers, 134 00:13:25,400 --> 00:13:30,920 which is going to feature and, you know, sort of potentially lower rates of promotion and progression going forward. 135 00:13:30,920 --> 00:13:38,640 So even a temporary impact can have a permanent effect. And also, you know, at the moment, we don't really know how temporary it is. 136 00:13:38,640 --> 00:13:44,510 You know, already many schools are having to send children home because of self isolation. 137 00:13:44,510 --> 00:13:50,930 And also, you know, there's worrying signs as to what might be happening in the childcare industry. 138 00:13:50,930 --> 00:13:55,530 So many say the early years childcare providers. 139 00:13:55,530 --> 00:14:00,810 We're facing a loss of income during the pandemic because obviously they had to and 140 00:14:00,810 --> 00:14:04,470 many women and men being on furlough or working from home or having lost their jobs. 141 00:14:04,470 --> 00:14:09,240 Those are reduced demands for outside the home childcare. 142 00:14:09,240 --> 00:14:10,950 So they lost their income. 143 00:14:10,950 --> 00:14:20,370 There's also an increased costs for areas childcare provider because they have to have increased security measures to make themselves covered secure. 144 00:14:20,370 --> 00:14:21,840 So, you know, 145 00:14:21,840 --> 00:14:31,500 this and this kind of endemic may have a sort of permanent impact or a longer term effect on the volume and the amounts of any is childcare available. 146 00:14:31,500 --> 00:14:40,590 And again, you know that that is going to mean that some of these this juggling and this increased childcare is going to persist in many ways. 147 00:14:40,590 --> 00:14:46,710 Cave. It has been, you know, exposing a number of fundamental inequalities in our society. 148 00:14:46,710 --> 00:14:50,100 And I think, you know, I think this evidence is suggesting that, you know, 149 00:14:50,100 --> 00:14:55,950 gender inequality is one of those inequalities that's really being revealed and tested. 150 00:14:55,950 --> 00:15:01,770 So just to finish with this quote, you know, has said we're all in this storm, but we're not in the same boat. 151 00:15:01,770 --> 00:15:11,300 And I think men and women have not been in the same boat when it comes to looking after kids and juggling work and childcare. 152 00:15:11,300 --> 00:15:21,360 Thank you. Thanks very much, sir. Look, I'm sure that many of many of us listening in can empathise with those findings. 153 00:15:21,360 --> 00:15:25,010 I'm sure many of the women will particularly empathise. 154 00:15:25,010 --> 00:15:32,810 And when the kids went back to school in this household, my wife came home on day one and said, I feel like a completely new woman. 155 00:15:32,810 --> 00:15:40,140 It was a big relief to but I didn't didn't quite have that same response that Almudena was out. 156 00:15:40,140 --> 00:15:44,770 I'm wondering, what did you find the most surprising result here? 157 00:15:44,770 --> 00:15:57,630 Oh, no, maybe not. Look, this is exactly the. So while Almaden is doing that and you're on mute, I might just pass to back to Sarah. 158 00:15:57,630 --> 00:16:01,630 Sorry, but what was surprised? I would say. Yeah. 159 00:16:01,630 --> 00:16:07,170 So in retrospect, I think that kind of ex post wasn't surprising. 160 00:16:07,170 --> 00:16:12,760 Disappointing, you know. So, you know, we you know, we know that pre-K is it. 161 00:16:12,760 --> 00:16:18,310 Those is sort of two thirds, one third division when it came to childcare. 162 00:16:18,310 --> 00:16:23,570 I think what was sort of you know, the change that came about was the results of Tagg's. 163 00:16:23,570 --> 00:16:28,690 It was just so huge in a way. You know, you have this massive increase in childcare. 164 00:16:28,690 --> 00:16:31,870 And I think I would agree that part of the reason for wanting to do research 165 00:16:31,870 --> 00:16:37,900 was to see whether this had led to a kind of sort of a new a new division, 166 00:16:37,900 --> 00:16:44,500 a new kind of like, you know, way of distributing childcare within the households. So, you know, in a way, perhaps it shouldn't be surprising, 167 00:16:44,500 --> 00:16:52,780 but to see the mapping from the pre-K allocation to the pipe code with allocation being kind of like so similar, 168 00:16:52,780 --> 00:16:57,720 I think the way the similarity of it was surprising because it wasn't a marginal change. 169 00:16:57,720 --> 00:17:04,950 Those economists were interested in like what happens at the margin, but an extra 40 hours a week of childcare, 170 00:17:04,950 --> 00:17:10,560 you know, compared to a baseline of sort of 15 to 20 is not a marginal change by any imagination. 171 00:17:10,560 --> 00:17:18,100 So I think I think that was surprising just how just just how sort of persistent that division was. 172 00:17:18,100 --> 00:17:23,740 I think that seems to me quite striking. And I was really hoping for a disruption. 173 00:17:23,740 --> 00:17:31,160 And it's sort of a new way of, you know, allocating childcare. And it just didn't really seem to come out in the data. 174 00:17:31,160 --> 00:17:35,500 There are a lot lots of parallels there. I could go on and on about the green recovery, too, 175 00:17:35,500 --> 00:17:42,590 and the power of inertia and incumbency in the system just continuing as it is, unless you properly intervene otherwise. 176 00:17:42,590 --> 00:17:48,700 Now, speaking of these challenges, things continuing as they are. 177 00:17:48,700 --> 00:17:53,080 Let me take a slightly more negative view on the and I'm hoping I can come to you now. 178 00:17:53,080 --> 00:18:01,090 The World Economic Forum said that covering 19 years has been the greatest setback for gender equality in a decade. 179 00:18:01,090 --> 00:18:06,010 So it's not just a continuation of existing inequalities. It's made matters worse. 180 00:18:06,010 --> 00:18:11,740 Is that an exaggeration? Do you think? Or are they wrong? I don't think it is an exaggeration. 181 00:18:11,740 --> 00:18:19,700 I think Assad has mentioned many of us were hoping for a shock to the system that would change, 182 00:18:19,700 --> 00:18:30,550 tilt the balance of the gender division of labour at home. Instead, we've continued to and there is a real danger that in the long run, 183 00:18:30,550 --> 00:18:38,200 it actually gets against was as women stay at home, they need to miss out on their labour market opportunities. 184 00:18:38,200 --> 00:18:47,060 And that creates a vicious cycle where they they devote more time to household responsibilities, less time to work. 185 00:18:47,060 --> 00:18:51,550 So. So I think it's it's it's quite right. 186 00:18:51,550 --> 00:19:00,430 And we should be looking at space and making sure that we don't go backwards, at least if that is right. 187 00:19:00,430 --> 00:19:06,640 It's obviously very serious. And the question then is then to think about what can the government do, 188 00:19:06,640 --> 00:19:13,450 what could be done from a policy perspective, what should have been done perhaps, or at least given where we are now? 189 00:19:13,450 --> 00:19:18,070 What what measures, what mechanisms, what solutions are there? 190 00:19:18,070 --> 00:19:22,630 Because getting just just kind of sending out a broadcast from, dare I say, 191 00:19:22,630 --> 00:19:28,410 Boris Johnson to the men of the world to step up or may not kind of do the good to deliver the goods. 192 00:19:28,410 --> 00:19:36,040 What should the government be doing here? So let's have a look at the U.N. has a sort of agenda policy track. 193 00:19:36,040 --> 00:19:42,020 So they've really highlighted the negative impacts of it on women and actually not just in terms of childcare, 194 00:19:42,020 --> 00:19:44,660 but, you know, the economic shocks and also, you know, 195 00:19:44,660 --> 00:19:51,010 the the increase in gender based violence that we've seen, as well as other sort of I think in terms of setbacks for women, 196 00:19:51,010 --> 00:19:56,550 I think it goes through bigger than just, you know, a family division of childcare. 197 00:19:56,550 --> 00:20:01,930 But there has to some countries have taken positive steps. 198 00:20:01,930 --> 00:20:05,430 So thinking about additional family leave. 199 00:20:05,430 --> 00:20:16,030 So, you know, in the current situation, you know, if children have to self isolate from school, you know, women will have to use a holiday, though. 200 00:20:16,030 --> 00:20:21,930 I mean, that sort of seems, you know, that quite hard hit by their family responsibilities. 201 00:20:21,930 --> 00:20:30,910 These holiday, they're going to lose an income or in some countries are recognising it by giving families additional leave and giving, you know, 202 00:20:30,910 --> 00:20:37,830 the people who look after the people who are self isolating cash payments, not just giving the people who are self isolating cash payments, 203 00:20:37,830 --> 00:20:43,060 you know, so if you're if you're looking after a child who doesn't deserve to have it, but they've been sent home by their school, 204 00:20:43,060 --> 00:20:50,730 their innocence, it seems that you should you should probably be eligible for some benefits as well, particularly if you have low low income and. 205 00:20:50,730 --> 00:20:57,370 You know, more generally, I think, recognising the infrastructure nature of child care, it's fundamentally important for, 206 00:20:57,370 --> 00:21:05,570 you know, sort of trying to get women back into work and ensure, you know, a sort of greater equality of opportunity. 207 00:21:05,570 --> 00:21:11,830 And I think, you know, the reason why this might have these permanent effects is, is if that Chauka infrastructure is sort of eroded, 208 00:21:11,830 --> 00:21:17,270 you know, then you get these you know, this sort of you have the shock of shock and it's allowed to persist over time. 209 00:21:17,270 --> 00:21:24,870 So we're really looking very carefully at, you know, the sustainability of early years provision and making sure that, 210 00:21:24,870 --> 00:21:29,030 you know, those payments in place to keep those child care going. 211 00:21:29,030 --> 00:21:38,120 I think is is hugely important. It does, however, that it can't just be the government because of the. 212 00:21:38,120 --> 00:21:44,780 It requires employers to, you know, sort of not penalise women who have taken time out. 213 00:21:44,780 --> 00:21:54,780 You know, we know women who get a part time, for example, because of caring responsibilities often slip behind in the in the workplace. 214 00:21:54,780 --> 00:22:00,650 You know, to say that the gender gap really opens up onto women, children and there's is sort of part time penalty, 215 00:22:00,650 --> 00:22:04,670 which isn't so immediate, but really, you know, it sort of builds up over time. 216 00:22:04,670 --> 00:22:08,180 So, you know, perhaps it is messaging from Boris Johnson. I'm not sure. 217 00:22:08,180 --> 00:22:13,100 But it is you know, it requires employers to, you know, sort of. 218 00:22:13,100 --> 00:22:22,510 Not not penalise women for the fact that they're bearing the brunt of this increased childcare and the sort of possibly longer term effects of it. 219 00:22:22,510 --> 00:22:31,150 How do you do that? I don't know. It's sort of, I think, trying to value gender equality in the workplace as a way of ensuring, 220 00:22:31,150 --> 00:22:35,420 you know, you get the best you know, the best talent is make the most of. 221 00:22:35,420 --> 00:22:41,660 And also, you know, ensuring that it's a it's a better workplace if it's looking after both men and women. 222 00:22:41,660 --> 00:22:47,000 You know, my great sense now, I'd like to ask you the same pretty much the same question. 223 00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:53,720 Sara may have stolen all of the good answers, but to actually, it's a question also from Lucy Herford who asks, 224 00:22:53,720 --> 00:23:01,640 what is the best solution, government or otherwise, to to address this setback for gender equality? 225 00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:05,690 Do you have any magic tricks up your sleeves or perhaps on magic tricks? Actually. 226 00:23:05,690 --> 00:23:10,950 This is probably going to be hard, unsustained work. What do we need to be doing? 227 00:23:10,950 --> 00:23:16,470 Well, I think if we think about what Sarah was mentioning at the start, to me, 228 00:23:16,470 --> 00:23:23,830 families need protection to to to be able to trace this this joke and the show continues. 229 00:23:23,830 --> 00:23:30,280 And it's here to continue as we don't know when schools may close or not. 230 00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:40,090 And but I think there is a double edged sword when when we offer all of these kind of benefits. 231 00:23:40,090 --> 00:23:46,750 And I'm not arguing that we don't, but we should be careful because it's always the woman that will stay at home. 232 00:23:46,750 --> 00:23:56,750 So. So I think, you know, in the same way that some governments now have incentives for fathers to stay at home when there's a new born child, 233 00:23:56,750 --> 00:23:59,680 we need some sort of asymmetric incentives. 234 00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:10,600 So that is not always the woman that takes on the extra the extra days to look after the kids or that remains at home, 235 00:24:10,600 --> 00:24:15,310 working from home while her partner goes out and works in the office. 236 00:24:15,310 --> 00:24:24,790 Because we know that that has, you know, working from home and being interrupted has consequences for for your earnings and your 237 00:24:24,790 --> 00:24:32,200 productivity in the same way that the loss of experience because you are on maternity leave. 238 00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:37,840 So so I think just being creative and challenging, you know, when thinking about these policies, 239 00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:42,910 we need to be thinking about policies that challenge the traditional gender 240 00:24:42,910 --> 00:24:52,250 division of labour and maybe incentivise incentivising men rather than women. 241 00:24:52,250 --> 00:25:00,930 There certainly seems to me to be a great point to be incentivising men to step up circularly. 242 00:25:00,930 --> 00:25:12,430 Now, there's a lovely question here from Louise, oddly, about the fact that this study is effectively focussing on heterosexual couples. 243 00:25:12,430 --> 00:25:19,840 But could we learn? Do we have any data? Could we learn anything about same sex parents or single parent households? 244 00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:31,090 And if we were to use those different households, same sex or single parent households alongside the heterosexual households, 245 00:25:31,090 --> 00:25:36,580 might we learn something about whether it is how much of this is gender per say and how much 246 00:25:36,580 --> 00:25:45,010 of it is about the evolution and the pre-existing distribution of child care between parents? 247 00:25:45,010 --> 00:25:50,860 Any gender? I have some interesting findings from the US. 248 00:25:50,860 --> 00:25:57,940 Actually, I'm working on what's happened in the states that have closed the schools as a result 249 00:25:57,940 --> 00:26:04,690 of the pandemic and how that it has it has impacted men and women differently. 250 00:26:04,690 --> 00:26:13,600 And the interesting thing coming out from there is that single women haven't been that much affected in terms of hours of work. 251 00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:22,170 And I think that goes back to. This is still very preliminary with looking at the immediate effects, obviously, in the long run. 252 00:26:22,170 --> 00:26:30,140 It may be a different question, but at least in the short run, it seems that these women have a good network of support. 253 00:26:30,140 --> 00:26:41,400 And that goes back to Sara's point about the childcare provision either by the government or by the private sector. 254 00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:47,880 In the case of single some of the single women in the US, it is neighbours and it is voluntary help. 255 00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:55,220 But that just highlights how important this to have that sort of support for for 256 00:26:55,220 --> 00:27:02,550 childcare that is much more flexible than what we currently have or is provided by. 257 00:27:02,550 --> 00:27:10,570 Can I ask a question about that? Because that's really interesting. So is that because they in effect, they need the income, so. 258 00:27:10,570 --> 00:27:16,070 They are not reducing their hours because of the requirement for that income. 259 00:27:16,070 --> 00:27:20,490 Yes, I mean, I can. There is a big a big you know, but that. 260 00:27:20,490 --> 00:27:28,880 But then how do they manage? Right. And, you know, we're just beginning to analyse these data. 261 00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:34,070 But this seems to be sort of the story. Yeah. 262 00:27:34,070 --> 00:27:38,360 Any any of us in line with what happens when the school closed for holidays, 263 00:27:38,360 --> 00:27:48,170 that these seem single women or ethnic minorities in the U.S. seem to be better protected because of these social networks that they have. 264 00:27:48,170 --> 00:27:54,770 But, of course, we cannot count on voluntary provision of child care or family and friends. 265 00:27:54,770 --> 00:28:03,160 Right. Just highlights how important it is. So I think the, you know, looking at same sex couples would be absolutely fascinating. 266 00:28:03,160 --> 00:28:09,500 Obasi unfortunately, you know, dates that we just wouldn't have had enough to be able to say anything meaningful. 267 00:28:09,500 --> 00:28:16,240 But I think it would be a really interesting sort of contrasting group to look at. 268 00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:18,910 But I hope to be working for the future. Would you. Would you. 269 00:28:18,910 --> 00:28:25,700 So let me push you a little bit and say, well, you have a hypothesis as to how much of it is to do with gender. 270 00:28:25,700 --> 00:28:31,190 How much of it is to do with kind of role performance? Let me put it that way. 271 00:28:31,190 --> 00:28:39,670 Irrespective of gender. I mean, it's a little bit hard to just I mean, it's a little bit hard to disentangle. 272 00:28:39,670 --> 00:28:49,460 I guess. Yeah, I mean, I mean I mean clearly I mean, clearly there are some very strong social norms at play here. 273 00:28:49,460 --> 00:28:53,960 I mean, you know, we I mean, we you know, so you might think that there's, you know, 274 00:28:53,960 --> 00:28:58,950 some kind of specialisation and it's you know, it's kind of an efficient sort of allocation. 275 00:28:58,950 --> 00:29:05,030 But, you know, the fact that women carried on, you know, providing a similar number of hours, 276 00:29:05,030 --> 00:29:09,530 irrespective of employment, what was happening to their partner's employment? 277 00:29:09,530 --> 00:29:17,360 This is sort of telling us that these sort of social norms are just hugely important in terms of driving behaviour, 278 00:29:17,360 --> 00:29:23,180 you know, because women are the primary carers or because they're women. You know, it becomes quite hard to disentangle the two. 279 00:29:23,180 --> 00:29:29,900 I guess. I mean. Well, I've worked a little bit on that disentangle the two. 280 00:29:29,900 --> 00:29:36,220 And one way of doing it is, is to see what happens across countries. 281 00:29:36,220 --> 00:29:44,440 And we know that depending on gender roles in each country, you have different divisions of household labour. 282 00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:46,820 The women are the same across all the countries. 283 00:29:46,820 --> 00:29:55,040 But women and men or there isn't any significant biological differences between men and women across countries. 284 00:29:55,040 --> 00:29:59,990 But there does seem to be a difference in terms of what those women and men think. 285 00:29:59,990 --> 00:30:04,790 And that that is reflected in economic outcomes in the division of household labour. 286 00:30:04,790 --> 00:30:11,240 So we do I do know that gender roles are important. 287 00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:11,540 Yeah. 288 00:30:11,540 --> 00:30:20,210 I mean, the both of those points are really quite powerful, actually, within your point about the cross-country cross-country kind of variations. 289 00:30:20,210 --> 00:30:24,350 Very useful to tease out those answers that make sense to me completely. 290 00:30:24,350 --> 00:30:32,300 And Sarah, your point that actually even even just within your own data sets the fact that you see variability by gender, 291 00:30:32,300 --> 00:30:36,820 even if the man was the primary caregiver or. 292 00:30:36,820 --> 00:30:43,750 Yeah, I just actually you you really I feel like you've given a good answer to that question, even without having same sex data. 293 00:30:43,750 --> 00:30:45,710 So it'd be great to have it, too. 294 00:30:45,710 --> 00:30:54,780 But OK, now let me go back to the list of questions that some want to hear from John Rosenfield, who says, read it out for you. 295 00:30:54,780 --> 00:31:01,990 You think that a study that assigns to men the cooking, cleaning, shopping and laundry could be fruitful? 296 00:31:01,990 --> 00:31:05,640 I'll let you interpret that however you see fit. 297 00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:10,910 But I guess the question is, have there ever been any kind of, I guess, 298 00:31:10,910 --> 00:31:19,790 quite interventionist sociological studies that would flip these gender roles around and for any length of time and see what happens? 299 00:31:19,790 --> 00:31:25,850 I suspect the answer is no. And then the question is, what would we learn if we did that? 300 00:31:25,850 --> 00:31:30,440 Maybe the answer is not very much. John, I don't know. But let me let me ask the experts. 301 00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:34,670 What do you think? Do you want to answer that? 302 00:31:34,670 --> 00:31:41,840 Is it? It sounds like the premise for an interesting reality TV show. 303 00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:45,860 That's probably nail on the head. That's probably what it is. And may not be interesting. 304 00:31:45,860 --> 00:31:50,460 Economists. I mean. Well, I mean, I think Ahmadinejad knows his literature better than I do. 305 00:31:50,460 --> 00:31:55,080 So, I mean, I think there have been you know, I mean, I think the interesting group, 306 00:31:55,080 --> 00:32:03,300 in a sense, the men who they see their behaviours in, but shaped by the economic shock. 307 00:32:03,300 --> 00:32:13,710 So there's a bunch of men who were on furlough. And to all who lost their jobs, it was sort of perhaps Marito partnered with women working. 308 00:32:13,710 --> 00:32:23,250 And those are the men that we see increasing childcare. So this you know, this is the real life equivalent of sort of forcing them to do the ironing. 309 00:32:23,250 --> 00:32:29,190 And the childcare question is, you know, sort of in six months or 20 years time. 310 00:32:29,190 --> 00:32:33,540 Oh, there's been still, you know, doing more than they otherwise would have done. 311 00:32:33,540 --> 00:32:36,900 So I think I think I think we have had that experiment. 312 00:32:36,900 --> 00:32:42,230 I think, you know, as I said, you know, we don't want to what we're not finding is that men have done nothing. 313 00:32:42,230 --> 00:32:49,080 You know, men have increased their childcare. It's just not as much. But there have been a group of men who where they you know, 314 00:32:49,080 --> 00:32:53,640 they've had the kind of the the sort of this the the the economic shock that has meant 315 00:32:53,640 --> 00:32:57,360 that they have more time on their hands and they're the ones who've increased the most. 316 00:32:57,360 --> 00:33:05,420 So those are the interesting set to kind of follow the time. My understanding I'm a senior is that there are some studies. 317 00:33:05,420 --> 00:33:13,140 Did the evidence on the persistence of these sort of shocks to social norm driven behaviour is a little bit mixed? 318 00:33:13,140 --> 00:33:18,070 Is that right? Yes. So from the paternity leave, explain. 319 00:33:18,070 --> 00:33:24,480 And we know that, you know, men do a little bit more of the childcare. 320 00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:33,600 Not necessarily a bit more of the housework, but over the longer term, it is not clear that, you know, 321 00:33:33,600 --> 00:33:44,980 men spending fifteen more days, which is the usual paternity leave, has any long drawn consequence for the gender division of labour. 322 00:33:44,980 --> 00:33:51,600 But but here we have a much bigger shock. So so there may be there may be room for improvement. 323 00:33:51,600 --> 00:33:59,230 There are very interesting questions. I'm sure we'll see the follow up study from one or both of you or somebody else in two years time. 324 00:33:59,230 --> 00:34:04,860 I just wanted to so tell the audience, obviously, the questions are coming in, which is which is great. 325 00:34:04,860 --> 00:34:09,000 You can click on the ask a question button on the bottom right of your screen. 326 00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:17,890 And you can also, if you're interested, click on the kind of turquoise button in the middle bottom of your screen to go directly to read the paper. 327 00:34:17,890 --> 00:34:23,280 Now, I'm going to reveal what surprised me most about your paper when I first looked at it. 328 00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:26,090 And it shouldn't have. It just kind of reveals my ignorance, I guess. 329 00:34:26,090 --> 00:34:35,970 But a full working hours, week of extra childcare, I thought really, even with even with my three terms behind me, is that what we were doing? 330 00:34:35,970 --> 00:34:42,880 But then you just add up the numbers and they're at school nine point thirty two, three thirty or four, five days a week. 331 00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:52,230 And it is indeed exactly those hours of the working hours week that's been added to every every household in child care. 332 00:34:52,230 --> 00:34:57,300 And then the question is where, where, where in God's name does it come from? 333 00:34:57,300 --> 00:35:05,880 Because some of us are pretty busy to begin with. And I know many of my colleagues, it's been coming out of sleep. 334 00:35:05,880 --> 00:35:10,090 I don't know if you have any insight on that. Clearly, some of it's been coming out of leisure. 335 00:35:10,090 --> 00:35:17,880 So those households who had a bit of leisure time before the pandemic lost their leisure and those households, 336 00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:21,990 it did not much less leisure because they're working too hard. Is it is it literally coming out of sleep? 337 00:35:21,990 --> 00:35:24,130 Do we know that or can we speculate? 338 00:35:24,130 --> 00:35:31,680 So I guess I guess I mean, so we should probably caveat the, you know, the quantity because, you know, so we have self reported data. 339 00:35:31,680 --> 00:35:37,200 And so when anyone might want to talk more about this, because, you know, so she's been looking at time use data, 340 00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:42,720 which is sort of, I guess, more sort of trucking activities, sort of our. 341 00:35:42,720 --> 00:35:46,780 Oh, so you know, so when families, sufferable, 40 hours. 342 00:35:46,780 --> 00:35:54,150 So they may be doing things at the same time. So, you know, they may be sort of typing and looking after that child being on a call. 343 00:35:54,150 --> 00:35:58,920 So it's sort of not necessarily 40 uninterrupted as a child. 344 00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:08,700 And I think there has agree. We all know from interrupted zoom calls that sort of, you know, quite often used to do multiple things at once. 345 00:36:08,700 --> 00:36:13,320 So I would do anything comments a little bit on those sort of different measures, you know. 346 00:36:13,320 --> 00:36:17,460 But women have also reduced their employment. So quite. 347 00:36:17,460 --> 00:36:20,550 I mean that well, there were people on furlough and people who lost their jobs. 348 00:36:20,550 --> 00:36:26,520 And then, you know, the evidence suggests they also reduced reduced their employment as well as a leisure, 349 00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:33,300 possibly a bit less sleep and a bit less working. But I'll hand it to the experts on. 350 00:36:33,300 --> 00:36:38,650 The system works well, hours of child care needs. 351 00:36:38,650 --> 00:36:42,450 I mean, I remember when I started working with so. 352 00:36:42,450 --> 00:36:49,730 So we collect time diaries, which is basically 24 hour accounts of what people do every ten minutes. 353 00:36:49,730 --> 00:36:56,360 So people respondents fill out these diaries when they say what they're doing every 10 minutes. 354 00:36:56,360 --> 00:37:07,410 And we've known for for a long time that men and women spend different times in in unpaid work. 355 00:37:07,410 --> 00:37:13,220 And, you know, and it's about the ratios are pretty similar to what we find in our paper. 356 00:37:13,220 --> 00:37:19,610 Women spend about three hours so doing childcare. So this is reported as childcare. 357 00:37:19,610 --> 00:37:24,660 Men about one. But of course, the time with children is much greater. 358 00:37:24,660 --> 00:37:29,660 And I think what we observe here through this study is, 359 00:37:29,660 --> 00:37:42,260 is basically time with children being interrupted or or just monitoring children and looking after children actively or not. 360 00:37:42,260 --> 00:37:50,600 And and and and that is important because it has implications for labour market outcomes. 361 00:37:50,600 --> 00:37:59,210 So so the time I guess, the measure, whether it is when it is an uninterrupted time, what is it this time? 362 00:37:59,210 --> 00:38:05,360 What the nature of that time? It is important. It is important to quantify. 363 00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:12,750 But regardless what the message here is that it has. 364 00:38:12,750 --> 00:38:17,190 Negative consequences for women's earnings potentials. 365 00:38:17,190 --> 00:38:22,790 You know, just in the short run, but also in the long run. Oh, yeah. 366 00:38:22,790 --> 00:38:28,140 There are a few more good questions here I want to come to. I just want to share a not even sure this is a question for me. 367 00:38:28,140 --> 00:38:38,310 It's a speculation that you may wish to comment on. A few years ago, I read this piece about the maker versus the manager time schedule. 368 00:38:38,310 --> 00:38:42,120 And if you know this one, the idea being that if you are managing things, 369 00:38:42,120 --> 00:38:47,210 you can do things in kind of 10 and 15 minute intervals or half hour intervals. 370 00:38:47,210 --> 00:38:51,330 Do you have a meeting? You make a decision, you send people on their way. 371 00:38:51,330 --> 00:38:57,330 Whereas if you're making something, you may need multiple hours of uninterrupted focus, 372 00:38:57,330 --> 00:39:04,530 time to do your analysis or to create your painting or to write your symphony. 373 00:39:04,530 --> 00:39:08,700 And I guess on the side, probably not very helpful, helpful speculation, 374 00:39:08,700 --> 00:39:16,200 but I wonder if the makers who need those big chunks of uninterrupted time have had a much harder go, 375 00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:23,220 whether women or men, actually, but probably particularly women through this pandemic compared to the managers. 376 00:39:23,220 --> 00:39:27,780 So if you're if you're if you're a woman and a managing role, then, of course, 377 00:39:27,780 --> 00:39:35,070 it's it's going to hit your productivity when when when the children come in and when you forget to lock the door behind you. 378 00:39:35,070 --> 00:39:42,600 Before you go on line. But perhaps that's less damaging than if you trying to complete a piece of artwork. 379 00:39:42,600 --> 00:39:46,860 So as I cited speculation. So coming out of your your data or your research. 380 00:39:46,860 --> 00:39:53,210 But you have any thoughts about that? Is that some reasonable. Well, I mean, I don't know about the makers versus managers, 381 00:39:53,210 --> 00:40:00,260 but it certainly chimes with that's really quite striking drop in female productivity in terms of research. 382 00:40:00,260 --> 00:40:01,370 I mean, you know, I think I mean, 383 00:40:01,370 --> 00:40:10,490 research is making type activity that you really need in a clear and uninterrupted head space to think about the issues and to get into it. 384 00:40:10,490 --> 00:40:13,490 And, you know, I think that's that's really Schachner. 385 00:40:13,490 --> 00:40:19,070 I mean, because all we know is that, you know, so we may speculate that, you know, about the type of research. 386 00:40:19,070 --> 00:40:26,150 But I think, you know, at 19 and a lot of the issues it's raising the sorts of issues it expects women, academics to engage. 387 00:40:26,150 --> 00:40:32,550 So the fact that it's in fewer women. 388 00:40:32,550 --> 00:40:36,590 Cobos, repeat, that's about Kofod 19. I think that's really striking. 389 00:40:36,590 --> 00:40:40,340 So apparently it was. So think again, this is going to your point. 390 00:40:40,340 --> 00:40:44,030 So, you know, so. So there are different stages in producing academic research. 391 00:40:44,030 --> 00:40:51,530 Some of those are more managing tasks. When you sort of, you know, maybe, you know, cleaning up a paper and resubmitting it versus, 392 00:40:51,530 --> 00:40:56,960 you know, starting from scratch with the research projects. And it's the starting from scratch, the really the making of the research, I think, 393 00:40:56,960 --> 00:41:03,980 where the evidence is showing that women who have suffered as opposed to kind of resubmitting papers or type tying them up. 394 00:41:03,980 --> 00:41:10,310 So. So that would be some, you know, some great place to hide. That would kind of fit with that that kind of person. 395 00:41:10,310 --> 00:41:13,110 Very interesting. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's. 396 00:41:13,110 --> 00:41:22,640 And so one way of looking at your question is to within the makers who are the ones that have had more interruptions to their time, 397 00:41:22,640 --> 00:41:27,710 to their working time in what have been the impacts on their productivity. 398 00:41:27,710 --> 00:41:33,710 And I think that research provides, you know, if we can see that rates are just meeting and making activity, 399 00:41:33,710 --> 00:41:42,320 those with higher childcare, Bardhan and in interactions to their productive and have been women in academia. 400 00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:50,710 And those are the ones that have been suffering the most. So I've got a long line of further thoughts on that topic. 401 00:41:50,710 --> 00:41:55,770 But unfortunately, doing an injustice to those questions, given we've got so little time left. 402 00:41:55,770 --> 00:42:08,480 So let me go back because I know always asked a really lovely question about the control of single sex vs. same sex versus heterosexual couples. 403 00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:16,790 I wish she's coming with a follow up. Could you control the data warehouse and look at situations where some fathers have taken 404 00:42:16,790 --> 00:42:23,120 shared parental leave since the new policy came in and how that might affect roles? 405 00:42:23,120 --> 00:42:29,510 I guess this goes to the point of is the hysteresis in in behaviours? 406 00:42:29,510 --> 00:42:36,150 Once you've changed a few nappies, you kind of get with the programme. It's not actually so terrible after all. 407 00:42:36,150 --> 00:42:44,200 And the men who do stay home when their children are born might be more likely to step up now or in due course. 408 00:42:44,200 --> 00:42:45,800 As we were discussing earlier, 409 00:42:45,800 --> 00:42:54,180 you might be able to look at studies that might show long run changes in contributions to childcare from the men who've stepped up during this. 410 00:42:54,180 --> 00:42:59,530 And again. So my understanding is it takes a shared parental leave has been incredibly low. 411 00:42:59,530 --> 00:43:02,020 Socio beings of two percent of those were eligible. 412 00:43:02,020 --> 00:43:10,610 It sort of goes back to muddiness points about, you know, really having to kind of get gender changes in gender norms, 413 00:43:10,610 --> 00:43:17,780 not just by offering policies, but in a way by incentivising people to take up those policies, I think, with their shared parental leave. 414 00:43:17,780 --> 00:43:25,760 One of the problems is if if a woman is the sort of secondary and then the cost of taking the shared parental leave is highest, 415 00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:29,270 it never really happens. So I don't think so. 416 00:43:29,270 --> 00:43:29,600 Again, 417 00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:36,830 I don't think there would be enough men who sort of stepped up because of shared parental leave to really make a sort of strong sample for analysis. 418 00:43:36,830 --> 00:43:44,900 But actually, I think you explore in a way in a sense, what we want to explore is not those households which followed the traditional model, 419 00:43:44,900 --> 00:43:50,470 but the households which follow the alternative model and sort of see what happens there. 420 00:43:50,470 --> 00:43:58,710 But we didn't we didn't focus on sort of particular household types in our study or that, you know, it would have been interesting to look at, 421 00:43:58,710 --> 00:44:07,000 as I said, the follow up study of what happened to those men who were furloughed, because that's that was a sizeable group of people. 422 00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:11,070 So the 20 percent being furloughed. And what happened to them? 423 00:44:11,070 --> 00:44:18,020 I think that's a really interesting group to follow up at the time. 424 00:44:18,020 --> 00:44:20,860 So we've got questions of various clusters of them. 425 00:44:20,860 --> 00:44:28,520 I mean, this was one about how much of how much of this is natural and unavoidable, where women physically need to have time off to have children. 426 00:44:28,520 --> 00:44:34,820 And I think without wanting to go into Lucy, that's your question. 427 00:44:34,820 --> 00:44:43,970 Thank you for it. I might avoid getting into deep nature versus nurture and or discussions about whether we have to put 428 00:44:43,970 --> 00:44:49,680 up with gender inequality and say that we're actually just going to do what we can to address it. 429 00:44:49,680 --> 00:44:56,080 Anyway, but unless, Sarah, we it if you wanted to come in on that, let me allow you to. 430 00:44:56,080 --> 00:45:09,640 But otherwise, let me pause. I think the cross-country comparison offers a great opportunity to study this nature vs. nature. 431 00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:15,580 I mean, when you look at another kind of a study is looking at second generation immigrants, 432 00:45:15,580 --> 00:45:21,740 they all face the same sort of institutions because they are all in the same countries, 433 00:45:21,740 --> 00:45:26,540 say second generation immigrants in the U.S. But they come from very different backgrounds. 434 00:45:26,540 --> 00:45:36,790 And in their behaviour in terms of gender, what they do at home and also female or source participation, etc. is totally different. 435 00:45:36,790 --> 00:45:43,340 So really, it is it is about gender, gender roles. 436 00:45:43,340 --> 00:45:48,190 And if it is about biology, I mean, technology can easily solve. 437 00:45:48,190 --> 00:45:53,580 You know, right now, I'm sure it would be easier to the incentive to do that. 438 00:45:53,580 --> 00:45:57,040 And so I think you're right. 439 00:45:57,040 --> 00:46:03,040 So thanks for the question, Lucy. But we will Will's dispatch that away very swiftly. 440 00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:06,970 Move. Moving on. So on the kind of where the time come from. 441 00:46:06,970 --> 00:46:14,570 Question. This is a follow up from S.L. What about time spent on social interactions with friends? 442 00:46:14,570 --> 00:46:19,930 Did women get a raw end of the deal there? I mean, implicitly, I guess the answer is yes. 443 00:46:19,930 --> 00:46:29,140 You can't spend that much more time looking after the children and maintaining the richness and diversity of your social networks. 444 00:46:29,140 --> 00:46:34,290 CEO goes on to say men keep their sacred boys not out. 445 00:46:34,290 --> 00:46:40,890 I have to say, this man didn't. We didn't we didn't have that level of detail. 446 00:46:40,890 --> 00:46:48,000 But she's so I researched the study of male and female mental health. 447 00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:56,060 And I think, you know, the conclusion from that study was that the increased family responsibility was partly to blame. 448 00:46:56,060 --> 00:46:59,800 Further deterioration, the greater deterioration in women's mental health. 449 00:46:59,800 --> 00:47:10,240 But actually, the women who experienced a greater deterioration of mental health with those who pre Kovik had the biggest social networks. 450 00:47:10,240 --> 00:47:17,950 So it's sort of, you know. So my interpretation of that is, in a sense, neither women, Norman, got to have that girl. 451 00:47:17,950 --> 00:47:19,570 So that men's night out. 452 00:47:19,570 --> 00:47:29,830 But it was a women because they typically had bigger social networks and derive sort of more mental health, better health from the social networks. 453 00:47:29,830 --> 00:47:35,050 What we know from, again, Kanyon studies in the arrival of children, 454 00:47:35,050 --> 00:47:43,900 which is similar similar shock to what we've experienced with Corbitt in terms of childcare demands on households. 455 00:47:43,900 --> 00:47:51,580 We know that that women give up Nesher and they give up on personal care activities 456 00:47:51,580 --> 00:47:59,890 and leisure socialising and in it's part of leisure and going out with friends, 457 00:47:59,890 --> 00:48:10,060 going to the gym as well. It's a social activity. And women keep that up in order to increase childcare. 458 00:48:10,060 --> 00:48:15,520 So and we also see that historically when, you know, 459 00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:24,340 female labour force participation has increased quite substantially since the 70s, childcare time hasn't decreased. 460 00:48:24,340 --> 00:48:30,350 So women are not spending less time with their children. What are they doing then with that? 461 00:48:30,350 --> 00:48:38,450 You know, with how can they manage an 80s leisure time and personal care to some extent? 462 00:48:38,450 --> 00:48:44,200 So both historically and in cross sections, we we observe the same thing. 463 00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:48,910 Something's got to give. Yeah, that makes sense. 464 00:48:48,910 --> 00:48:53,640 So now many parents certainly in my situation, 465 00:48:53,640 --> 00:49:05,660 having three children who go out to educational provision elsewhere have a deep appreciation of the value that teachers provide. 466 00:49:05,660 --> 00:49:11,830 Post this Penderecki. Hopefully we all have an appreciation value of teachers before it as well. 467 00:49:11,830 --> 00:49:22,840 And there's a question from Sandy Ruxton about an appreciation for the value of care was much greater visibility of caring for not just children, 468 00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:30,310 but actually caring for the sick and the isolated across the economy. 469 00:49:30,310 --> 00:49:33,640 So it's a much broader zoomed out kind of question. 470 00:49:33,640 --> 00:49:43,660 Do you think that this renewed appreciation for carers, perhaps the NHS more generally and for teachers in particular, caring? 471 00:49:43,660 --> 00:49:48,790 Could this give a kind of fillip, a bit of a push to the caring economy? 472 00:49:48,790 --> 00:49:54,220 Along the lines, Sandy suggests, of the women's budget group report. 473 00:49:54,220 --> 00:50:04,180 Yeah, well, I am a member of the women's budget group. I was going to say one of the things that that we push for is, 474 00:50:04,180 --> 00:50:11,860 is for the government to take this kind of carer's lens and gender lines into their budgets. 475 00:50:11,860 --> 00:50:16,570 So, you know, we're talking about policy that that would be one way forward. 476 00:50:16,570 --> 00:50:26,110 I think there is a fundamental distinction between what teachers and health care workers do and what parents do in these suits. 477 00:50:26,110 --> 00:50:39,720 I think the difficulty that well, this is this is why our study is so important to put the evidence out there and to say that, 478 00:50:39,720 --> 00:50:45,790 well, so why is it different for parents and say for teachers, teachers that choose to be teachers? 479 00:50:45,790 --> 00:50:52,240 But, you know, they basically parents, parents choose to be parents. 480 00:50:52,240 --> 00:51:03,610 But if you have, say, a you know, a fake family member, you don't choose that. 481 00:51:03,610 --> 00:51:10,690 Right. So so, you know. So the arguments would be why? 482 00:51:10,690 --> 00:51:17,840 Or teachers didn't choose, you know, when when they were choosing to to teach or to become teachers. 483 00:51:17,840 --> 00:51:24,100 They didn't they didn't choose to have a situation where they would have to deal with this sort of crisis. 484 00:51:24,100 --> 00:51:29,560 Whereas when you become a parents, you know, you become a parent for all your life and no matter what. 485 00:51:29,560 --> 00:51:39,070 Right. So. So then so. So I think that is why it is so difficult to get this message across in some circles 486 00:51:39,070 --> 00:51:44,320 that women are really struggling because the underlying sort of assumption is, 487 00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:55,010 well, you knew what you were buying into. And I think that is why these papers are so important, not just thare in in my pay grade, 488 00:51:55,010 --> 00:52:00,340 but other papers that are coming out to say, you know, nobody over oversaw this. 489 00:52:00,340 --> 00:52:07,090 And really, it is a lot of work and it's having a negative impact on women. 490 00:52:07,090 --> 00:52:17,230 And it's just it's not fair and it's not efficient to run an economy where 50 percent of the population cannot fulfil their dreams. 491 00:52:17,230 --> 00:52:25,180 So but I think we are making data on analogue or analogy to to other carers. 492 00:52:25,180 --> 00:52:31,900 It's always tricky because of the nature of parenting. But maybe Farrah has a different view. 493 00:52:31,900 --> 00:52:37,800 No, I was just I was just reflecting actually, I'm a bit less optimistic than so. 494 00:52:37,800 --> 00:52:43,980 I've forgotten those is at least a question. Do you see you see, it was sending Sunday's story Sunday. 495 00:52:43,980 --> 00:52:48,670 Yeah. I mean, we care for the carers, but they were just basically the NHS carers. 496 00:52:48,670 --> 00:52:50,900 We're not gonna pay them any more. 497 00:52:50,900 --> 00:52:58,180 And I rather fear that, you know, when the probably inevitable budget cuts come in, I think carers are probably going to be quite hard hit. 498 00:52:58,180 --> 00:53:06,010 So, you know, I think, you know, I think we are a timely reminder of all the caring that was done would be good. 499 00:53:06,010 --> 00:53:16,740 But, you know, I don't see much evidence that we really, as society are valuing carers much more and in a truly systematic way, unfortunately. 500 00:53:16,740 --> 00:53:23,300 So we work on this kind of social values. And so it's not just the economic incentives and the government policy. 501 00:53:23,300 --> 00:53:27,100 But, I mean, you're delivering a bit. Oh, gee, I'm running out of time to be quick. 502 00:53:27,100 --> 00:53:39,370 So this is science. Paul's question, really, because a lot a lot of this is about societal expectations and effectively cultural trends. 503 00:53:39,370 --> 00:53:44,410 How do we what can we do to move this along quicker? 504 00:53:44,410 --> 00:53:49,450 You know, the various stats suggesting that the rate of change. 505 00:53:49,450 --> 00:53:54,890 Several millennia before we hit something resembling. I exaggerate but gender equality. 506 00:53:54,890 --> 00:54:04,120 What might we do to help accelerate progress? 507 00:54:04,120 --> 00:54:08,210 So, I mean, you know, I think measures such as, you know, it's a real shame, 508 00:54:08,210 --> 00:54:12,110 actually, that, you know, at a point too much gender inequality is facing a setback. 509 00:54:12,110 --> 00:54:16,970 The government suspended publication of the gender pay gap, the data, because in a way, 510 00:54:16,970 --> 00:54:30,010 I think that was really useful as a way of highlighting the issue and also giving individuals something to sort of work with. 511 00:54:30,010 --> 00:54:37,820 Yes. You know, so, you know, I think, you know, it's achieving may just, you know, 512 00:54:37,820 --> 00:54:43,820 social and cultural changes probably beyond the the capacity of any individual economists. 513 00:54:43,820 --> 00:54:48,590 But, you know, in general, you know, highlighting the problem, I think is a really important start. 514 00:54:48,590 --> 00:54:54,350 So, you know, I really do hope that the government continues with the gender pay gap reporting and that companies you know, 515 00:54:54,350 --> 00:55:02,450 that, you know, what we want is for companies to see reducing their gender pay gap as a sign of their own individual success. 516 00:55:02,450 --> 00:55:07,760 I think that would be that would be really. I think it's very fair since we're running out of time. 517 00:55:07,760 --> 00:55:19,460 I just want to get that takes for the government to adopt gender equality, not just policies that challenge that gender division of Labour. 518 00:55:19,460 --> 00:55:25,670 It if not enough to compensate women exposed for the extra care. 519 00:55:25,670 --> 00:55:39,680 We really need to to change that gender division of labour by, again, making sure that men also take leave and that they work from home, cetera. 520 00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:45,350 Well, they're both great answers to what was truly the toughest question, which I to the end. 521 00:55:45,350 --> 00:55:50,150 My apologies to those of you who ask questions that I didn't get around to answering. 522 00:55:50,150 --> 00:55:54,280 I could have kept going for another at least half an hour, maybe, maybe much longer. 523 00:55:54,280 --> 00:56:01,580 It's fascinating area. Thank you very much for your work, not just for this paper, for the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, but in this field. 524 00:56:01,580 --> 00:56:09,500 Full stop. It's really very important. I'm sure those tuning in and listening will have enjoyed the conversation as much as I have. 525 00:56:09,500 --> 00:56:13,550 So for those of you tuning in, we have one more. 526 00:56:13,550 --> 00:56:18,200 In fact, two more in this series. The Session with Marianne Mazza of Kotto. 527 00:56:18,200 --> 00:56:24,170 Next week has been postponed. We'll be back in touch. Keep your eye on the Web site for the change in diet. 528 00:56:24,170 --> 00:56:30,260 But we have confirmed ready to go is Dr. Yulieski from the Bank of England, 529 00:56:30,260 --> 00:56:38,840 who's been managing editor children while sorting out the monetary and, well, the banks thinking on the pandemic. 530 00:56:38,840 --> 00:56:44,390 So she'll be joining us for a tale of two crises covered, 19. 531 00:56:44,390 --> 00:56:47,920 And the financial system on the 14th of October. 532 00:56:47,920 --> 00:56:53,420 So it remains for me to thank Almudena and Sara for your work, for your insights, 533 00:56:53,420 --> 00:56:57,860 for everything you're doing here, and for joining me today with the Oxford Martin School. 534 00:56:57,860 --> 00:57:01,649 Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks.