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,
we've covered a number of issues so far in this series,
ranging from globalised trade to regional finance to macro coordination with the effects of the pandemic on sub-Saharan Africa.
And then in the most recent session, thankfully chaired by the former director of the Martin School,
who stepped infamy in short notice on supply chain and demand shock.
So thank you. In Golden Ray of. Very great. You could do it for me.
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.
And we have the experts with us to talk about this question.
Professor Sarah Smith, Process Presbury of the School of Economics at Bristol.
She has an Oxford heritage, having done PPA and specialise in politics, actually, and spent some time in a political consultancy before.
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
Studies and was previously the chair of the Royal Economics Society's Women's Committee.
And with her, her co-author in their joint paper in the Oxford Review is Professor Data Cydia,
who is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at UCL and co-director of the UCL Centre of Time Use Research.
She's held positions at Queen Mary at Oxford and the Congressional Budget Office in
Washington after APHC in Brown in family and population economics and econometrics.
And she's currently the chair of the Royal Economics Society's Women's Committee.
So we really have the full force. With us today, which is wonderful.
And Almudena and Sarah are going to tell you about wonderful natural experiment.
Now, economists love natural experiments.
So in a sense, because, you know, the KOVA 19 is giving us these research opportunities that we wouldn't have otherwise had.
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.
So that's the finding of the paper as we get to in a moment.
What they what they've done is cleverly use the impact of the pandemic to have a deeper understanding,
the division of home labour, using data from on the daily lives of people across the UK with families under Chapter 12.
And I'm one of those families with three children under 12.
And perhaps somewhat ironically, it's my wife who's looking out now while I'm here talking to you.
But that's it for my introductory remarks while I'm already on the back foot.
And I will hand over to Sarah to present the findings of the paper.
So thank you. Thank you very much, Cameron. So, yeah.
So in the in the traditional sort of academic seminar, I'm afraid I'm gonna get some sleep.
I can get them to age. Let's see how I get on with sharing my screen just to trunk's.
So I just will. Screw the main results first, if that's okay, and then open it up for questions.
That's terrific. That's wacky. That's what I said.
So what were we looking at?
So what the Kovic pandemic represents, it was a major shock both to the demand side and the supply side, home and child care.
So there was a massive increase in demand with the closure of schools and nurseries and other forms of child care.
But there was also an increase in supply. As you know, many people were put onto furlough and some lost that job.
So what we were interested in was seeing what the combined impact of both of these events were.
We thought this was a really interesting opportunity to see whether traditional patterns of division of
child care carried drivel or whether there might be a disruption that we might see new patterns emerging.
So we were interested in finding out what was happening in the immediate aftermath of the COVA pandemic and the lockdown.
So we commissioned a survey data from Ipsos MORI as part of that omnibus survey.
The analysis we're going to present focuses mainly on heterosexual couples with young children,
with fine young children as being less than or equal to twelve. So what did we find?
So, you know, obviously many people doing lockdown with kind of kept inside their homes and within homes of families with young children.
Essentially, there was a huge translation and what they were having to do and we were finding know, not surprisingly,
the families with young children were basically doing the equivalent of an additional working week in terms of childcare.
I mean, the sheer volume of childcare, the additional childcare the families with young children face was really quite staggering.
And, you know, remember, many of these families were still working, working from home.
And in some cases of also trying to juggle kind of working at their normal places of work.
What we found was that traditional divisions of childcare were largely kind of carried over onto this additional burden of childcare.
So what we found was that women have done by far the greatest share of this additional childcare.
So they did on average, around 63 percent. So that's not to say that men weren't stepping up and doing some childcare.
In fact, you know, they increased the amount of childcare that they did.
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.
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.
But the demand side burden was mainly for me falling on the women also.
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.
So we know from other studies that men often specialise in certain types of childcare activities,
focussing a bit more education in structured play rather than general care.
And also, in terms of housework, they tends to grocery shopping rather than sort of general cleaning.
So, yeah, so some men were doing more, but it was kind of a little bit specialised.
And it was really very much linked to whether they were working or not.
Whereas women were doing more, kind of like irrespective of whether they're working.
So I think you can say, you know,
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.
I think, you know,
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.
There was nothing new about essentially the division of childcare during the course of the pandemic.
There's also evidence that women have taken a worst economic hit than men during the
recession and that the economic disruption caused by Kovik and the subsequent lockdown.
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.
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.
So either on furlough or actually having left employment altogether.
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.
Those are the findings from our study. But they mirror almost exactly the findings from other studies of estimates of the same gender differences.
So women work in sectors that were hard to hit. So retail and leisure.
So we know those at the sector and hospitality. Those are the sectors which most affected by knocked down.
But this isn't the full story in terms of understanding why women were more likely not to be working.
In fact, I think women were not working, partly because of the childcare that they had to do.
So they're not.
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.
And those women who pre-K we did a higher share of childcare were more likely to be not working.
So in a sense, they they there were some indigeneity or some choice in terms of whether they were working or not.
Other studies have also found we just looked at employment as a sort of binary outcome.
Other studies have found that women have reduced their hours to accommodate childcare.
So that's also going to add to the economic hit that they've faced.
So, as I said, women have been juggling work and childcare much more than men.
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,
sort of your own employment status and then the right hand side, your partner's employment status.
So what you can see is that, first of all,
the amounts of additional childcare being done by women is greater than the amounts of additional childcare being done by men.
And second, the you know, there's less variation in those bars for women than there is a man.
So this idea that, yes, men are increasing, but it's mainly when they're not working.
So when they've had this sort of, you know, economic shock.
Whereas for women, they're typically doing large amounts of additional childcare even when they're working.
Hence the kind of reduction in hours. And also, you know, an increase in the amount of juggling that they do.
So I know that the first study, actually, Almudena, is also been involved in that.
And she can tell you more about sort of the apparent ISIS study.
But they looked at time use data where you can look at sort of different activities done within discrete windows during the day.
And they're finding was that for every one hour of uninterrupted work time, women were enjoying certain joy use,
enjoying advisedly, but for every one hour under-report an uninterrupted worked women had men had three hours.
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,
you know, hour by hour to a greater extent than men men were.
So why does this matter? Well, I think there are two kinds of issues of concern.
So first of all, as you know, all this juggling, all this extra childcare is a huge strain for parents.
You know, I think I can imagine it facing an additional work equivalent of a working week in terms of hours childcare.
There's little downtime for parents of young children.
So, again, you know, if I study Pre Lockdown's 70 percent of parents reporting some leisure time at seven o'clock,
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.
Everyone was not allowed out either. So a huge, huge strain on people.
And we know that women's mental health has deteriorated twice as much as men's health.
You know, during during the pandemic and since since the lockdown period.
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.
And then the other issue, of course, slightly longer term is the possible implications for the gender pay gap.
So women are currently paid around 20 percent less than men.
And we know from other research that childcare is probably the most significant single factor in terms of driving the gender pay gap.
So the gender pay gap really kind of becomes more pronounced after the arrival of
children because women are sort of factoring children into their employment choices.
So we know gender pay gap reporting, which the government introduced last year and two years ago, is currently suspended.
So, you know, we don't know the immediate impacts of any of these measures.
It'll be interesting to see, you know, what happens when a gender pay gap reporting is resumed.
So you may think it's kind of, you know, this is only temporary.
You know, hopefully at some point, you know, we may know schools have reopened, nurseries have reopened,
and it will this additional childcare is now not being required to be provided in the home.
I think it's you know, even if it were only temporary, there are likely to be permanent effects arising.
So, you know, looking very close to home in academia.
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.
You know, preprint publications coming from women vs. men.
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.
The share of new work on Kofod 19 for women is particularly low.
And so if you're not getting the research done, that's going to feature, you know, and not getting any papers,
which is going to feature and, you know, sort of potentially lower rates of promotion and progression going forward.
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.
You know, already many schools are having to send children home because of self isolation.
And also, you know, there's worrying signs as to what might be happening in the childcare industry.
So many say the early years childcare providers.
We're facing a loss of income during the pandemic because obviously they had to and
many women and men being on furlough or working from home or having lost their jobs.
Those are reduced demands for outside the home childcare.
So they lost their income.
There's also an increased costs for areas childcare provider because they have to have increased security measures to make themselves covered secure.
So, you know,
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.
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.
Cave. It has been, you know, exposing a number of fundamental inequalities in our society.
And I think, you know, I think this evidence is suggesting that, you know,
gender inequality is one of those inequalities that's really being revealed and tested.
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.
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.
Thank you. Thanks very much, sir. Look, I'm sure that many of many of us listening in can empathise with those findings.
I'm sure many of the women will particularly empathise.
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.
It was a big relief to but I didn't didn't quite have that same response that Almudena was out.
I'm wondering, what did you find the most surprising result here?
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.
Sorry, but what was surprised? I would say. Yeah.
So in retrospect, I think that kind of ex post wasn't surprising.
Disappointing, you know. So, you know, we you know, we know that pre-K is it.
Those is sort of two thirds, one third division when it came to childcare.
I think what was sort of you know, the change that came about was the results of Tagg's.
It was just so huge in a way. You know, you have this massive increase in childcare.
And I think I would agree that part of the reason for wanting to do research
was to see whether this had led to a kind of sort of a new a new division,
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,
but to see the mapping from the pre-K allocation to the pipe code with allocation being kind of like so similar,
I think the way the similarity of it was surprising because it wasn't a marginal change.
Those economists were interested in like what happens at the margin, but an extra 40 hours a week of childcare,
you know, compared to a baseline of sort of 15 to 20 is not a marginal change by any imagination.
So I think I think that was surprising just how just just how sort of persistent that division was.
I think that seems to me quite striking. And I was really hoping for a disruption.
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.
There are a lot lots of parallels there. I could go on and on about the green recovery, too,
and the power of inertia and incumbency in the system just continuing as it is, unless you properly intervene otherwise.
Now, speaking of these challenges, things continuing as they are.
Let me take a slightly more negative view on the and I'm hoping I can come to you now.
The World Economic Forum said that covering 19 years has been the greatest setback for gender equality in a decade.
So it's not just a continuation of existing inequalities. It's made matters worse.
Is that an exaggeration? Do you think? Or are they wrong? I don't think it is an exaggeration.
I think Assad has mentioned many of us were hoping for a shock to the system that would change,
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,
it actually gets against was as women stay at home, they need to miss out on their labour market opportunities.
And that creates a vicious cycle where they they devote more time to household responsibilities, less time to work.
So. So I think it's it's it's quite right.
And we should be looking at space and making sure that we don't go backwards, at least if that is right.
It's obviously very serious. And the question then is then to think about what can the government do,
what could be done from a policy perspective, what should have been done perhaps, or at least given where we are now?
What what measures, what mechanisms, what solutions are there?
Because getting just just kind of sending out a broadcast from, dare I say,
Boris Johnson to the men of the world to step up or may not kind of do the good to deliver the goods.
What should the government be doing here? So let's have a look at the U.N. has a sort of agenda policy track.
So they've really highlighted the negative impacts of it on women and actually not just in terms of childcare,
but, you know, the economic shocks and also, you know,
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,
I think it goes through bigger than just, you know, a family division of childcare.
But there has to some countries have taken positive steps.
So thinking about additional family leave.
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.
I mean, that sort of seems, you know, that quite hard hit by their family responsibilities.
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,
the people who look after the people who are self isolating cash payments, not just giving the people who are self isolating cash payments,
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,
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.
You know, more generally, I think, recognising the infrastructure nature of child care, it's fundamentally important for,
you know, sort of trying to get women back into work and ensure, you know, a sort of greater equality of opportunity.
And I think, you know, the reason why this might have these permanent effects is, is if that Chauka infrastructure is sort of eroded,
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.
So we're really looking very carefully at, you know, the sustainability of early years provision and making sure that,
you know, those payments in place to keep those child care going.
I think is is hugely important. It does, however, that it can't just be the government because of the.
It requires employers to, you know, sort of not penalise women who have taken time out.
You know, we know women who get a part time, for example, because of caring responsibilities often slip behind in the in the workplace.
You know, to say that the gender gap really opens up onto women, children and there's is sort of part time penalty,
which isn't so immediate, but really, you know, it sort of builds up over time.
So, you know, perhaps it is messaging from Boris Johnson. I'm not sure.
But it is you know, it requires employers to, you know, sort of.
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.
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,
you know, you get the best you know, the best talent is make the most of.
And also, you know, ensuring that it's a it's a better workplace if it's looking after both men and women.
You know, my great sense now, I'd like to ask you the same pretty much the same question.
Sara may have stolen all of the good answers, but to actually, it's a question also from Lucy Herford who asks,
what is the best solution, government or otherwise, to to address this setback for gender equality?
Do you have any magic tricks up your sleeves or perhaps on magic tricks? Actually.
This is probably going to be hard, unsustained work. What do we need to be doing?
Well, I think if we think about what Sarah was mentioning at the start, to me,
families need protection to to to be able to trace this this joke and the show continues.
And it's here to continue as we don't know when schools may close or not.
And but I think there is a double edged sword when when we offer all of these kind of benefits.
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.
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,
we need some sort of asymmetric incentives.
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,
working from home while her partner goes out and works in the office.
Because we know that that has, you know, working from home and being interrupted has consequences for for your earnings and your
productivity in the same way that the loss of experience because you are on maternity leave.
So so I think just being creative and challenging, you know, when thinking about these policies,
we need to be thinking about policies that challenge the traditional gender
division of labour and maybe incentivise incentivising men rather than women.
There certainly seems to me to be a great point to be incentivising men to step up circularly.
Now, there's a lovely question here from Louise, oddly, about the fact that this study is effectively focussing on heterosexual couples.
But could we learn? Do we have any data? Could we learn anything about same sex parents or single parent households?
And if we were to use those different households, same sex or single parent households alongside the heterosexual households,
might we learn something about whether it is how much of this is gender per say and how much
of it is about the evolution and the pre-existing distribution of child care between parents?
Any gender? I have some interesting findings from the US.
Actually, I'm working on what's happened in the states that have closed the schools as a result
of the pandemic and how that it has it has impacted men and women differently.
And the interesting thing coming out from there is that single women haven't been that much affected in terms of hours of work.
And I think that goes back to. This is still very preliminary with looking at the immediate effects, obviously, in the long run.
It may be a different question, but at least in the short run, it seems that these women have a good network of support.
And that goes back to Sara's point about the childcare provision either by the government or by the private sector.
In the case of single some of the single women in the US, it is neighbours and it is voluntary help.
But that just highlights how important this to have that sort of support for for
childcare that is much more flexible than what we currently have or is provided by.
Can I ask a question about that? Because that's really interesting. So is that because they in effect, they need the income, so.
They are not reducing their hours because of the requirement for that income.
Yes, I mean, I can. There is a big a big you know, but that.
But then how do they manage? Right. And, you know, we're just beginning to analyse these data.
But this seems to be sort of the story. Yeah.
Any any of us in line with what happens when the school closed for holidays,
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.
But, of course, we cannot count on voluntary provision of child care or family and friends.
Right. Just highlights how important it is. So I think the, you know, looking at same sex couples would be absolutely fascinating.
Obasi unfortunately, you know, dates that we just wouldn't have had enough to be able to say anything meaningful.
But I think it would be a really interesting sort of contrasting group to look at.
But I hope to be working for the future. Would you. Would you.
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.
How much of it is to do with kind of role performance? Let me put it that way.
Irrespective of gender. I mean, it's a little bit hard to just I mean, it's a little bit hard to disentangle.
I guess. Yeah, I mean, I mean I mean clearly I mean, clearly there are some very strong social norms at play here.
I mean, you know, we I mean, we you know, so you might think that there's, you know,
some kind of specialisation and it's you know, it's kind of an efficient sort of allocation.
But, you know, the fact that women carried on, you know, providing a similar number of hours,
irrespective of employment, what was happening to their partner's employment?
This is sort of telling us that these sort of social norms are just hugely important in terms of driving behaviour,
you know, because women are the primary carers or because they're women. You know, it becomes quite hard to disentangle the two.
I guess. I mean. Well, I've worked a little bit on that disentangle the two.
And one way of doing it is, is to see what happens across countries.
And we know that depending on gender roles in each country, you have different divisions of household labour.
The women are the same across all the countries.
But women and men or there isn't any significant biological differences between men and women across countries.
But there does seem to be a difference in terms of what those women and men think.
And that that is reflected in economic outcomes in the division of household labour.
So we do I do know that gender roles are important.
Yeah.
I mean, the both of those points are really quite powerful, actually, within your point about the cross-country cross-country kind of variations.
Very useful to tease out those answers that make sense to me completely.
And Sarah, your point that actually even even just within your own data sets the fact that you see variability by gender,
even if the man was the primary caregiver or.
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.
So it'd be great to have it, too.
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.
You think that a study that assigns to men the cooking, cleaning, shopping and laundry could be fruitful?
I'll let you interpret that however you see fit.
But I guess the question is, have there ever been any kind of, I guess,
quite interventionist sociological studies that would flip these gender roles around and for any length of time and see what happens?
I suspect the answer is no. And then the question is, what would we learn if we did that?
Maybe the answer is not very much. John, I don't know. But let me let me ask the experts.
What do you think? Do you want to answer that?
Is it? It sounds like the premise for an interesting reality TV show.
That's probably nail on the head. That's probably what it is. And may not be interesting.
Economists. I mean. Well, I mean, I think Ahmadinejad knows his literature better than I do.
So, I mean, I think there have been you know, I mean, I think the interesting group,
in a sense, the men who they see their behaviours in, but shaped by the economic shock.
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.
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.
And the childcare question is, you know, sort of in six months or 20 years time.
Oh, there's been still, you know, doing more than they otherwise would have done.
So I think I think I think we have had that experiment.
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.
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,
they've had the kind of the the sort of this the the the economic shock that has meant
that they have more time on their hands and they're the ones who've increased the most.
So those are the interesting set to kind of follow the time. My understanding I'm a senior is that there are some studies.
Did the evidence on the persistence of these sort of shocks to social norm driven behaviour is a little bit mixed?
Is that right? Yes. So from the paternity leave, explain.
And we know that, you know, men do a little bit more of the childcare.
Not necessarily a bit more of the housework, but over the longer term, it is not clear that, you know,
men spending fifteen more days, which is the usual paternity leave, has any long drawn consequence for the gender division of labour.
But but here we have a much bigger shock. So so there may be there may be room for improvement.
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.
I just wanted to so tell the audience, obviously, the questions are coming in, which is which is great.
You can click on the ask a question button on the bottom right of your screen.
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.
Now, I'm going to reveal what surprised me most about your paper when I first looked at it.
And it shouldn't have. It just kind of reveals my ignorance, I guess.
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?
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.
And it is indeed exactly those hours of the working hours week that's been added to every every household in child care.
And then the question is where, where, where in God's name does it come from?
Because some of us are pretty busy to begin with. And I know many of my colleagues, it's been coming out of sleep.
I don't know if you have any insight on that. Clearly, some of it's been coming out of leisure.
So those households who had a bit of leisure time before the pandemic lost their leisure and those households,
it did not much less leisure because they're working too hard. Is it is it literally coming out of sleep?
Do we know that or can we speculate?
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.
And so when anyone might want to talk more about this, because, you know, so she's been looking at time use data,
which is sort of, I guess, more sort of trucking activities, sort of our.
Oh, so you know, so when families, sufferable, 40 hours.
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.
So it's sort of not necessarily 40 uninterrupted as a child.
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.
So I would do anything comments a little bit on those sort of different measures, you know.
But women have also reduced their employment. So quite.
I mean that well, there were people on furlough and people who lost their jobs.
And then, you know, the evidence suggests they also reduced reduced their employment as well as a leisure,
possibly a bit less sleep and a bit less working. But I'll hand it to the experts on.
The system works well, hours of child care needs.
I mean, I remember when I started working with so.
So we collect time diaries, which is basically 24 hour accounts of what people do every ten minutes.
So people respondents fill out these diaries when they say what they're doing every 10 minutes.
And we've known for for a long time that men and women spend different times in in unpaid work.
And, you know, and it's about the ratios are pretty similar to what we find in our paper.
Women spend about three hours so doing childcare. So this is reported as childcare.
Men about one. But of course, the time with children is much greater.
And I think what we observe here through this study is,
is basically time with children being interrupted or or just monitoring children and looking after children actively or not.
And and and and that is important because it has implications for labour market outcomes.
So so the time I guess, the measure, whether it is when it is an uninterrupted time, what is it this time?
What the nature of that time? It is important. It is important to quantify.
But regardless what the message here is that it has.
Negative consequences for women's earnings potentials.
You know, just in the short run, but also in the long run. Oh, yeah.
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.
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.
And if you know this one, the idea being that if you are managing things,
you can do things in kind of 10 and 15 minute intervals or half hour intervals.
Do you have a meeting? You make a decision, you send people on their way.
Whereas if you're making something, you may need multiple hours of uninterrupted focus,
time to do your analysis or to create your painting or to write your symphony.
And I guess on the side, probably not very helpful, helpful speculation,
but I wonder if the makers who need those big chunks of uninterrupted time have had a much harder go,
whether women or men, actually, but probably particularly women through this pandemic compared to the managers.
So if you're if you're if you're a woman and a managing role, then, of course,
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.
Before you go on line. But perhaps that's less damaging than if you trying to complete a piece of artwork.
So as I cited speculation. So coming out of your your data or your research.
But you have any thoughts about that? Is that some reasonable. Well, I mean, I don't know about the makers versus managers,
but it certainly chimes with that's really quite striking drop in female productivity in terms of research.
I mean, you know, I think I mean,
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.
And, you know, I think that's that's really Schachner.
I mean, because all we know is that, you know, so we may speculate that, you know, about the type of research.
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.
So the fact that it's in fewer women.
Cobos, repeat, that's about Kofod 19. I think that's really striking.
So apparently it was. So think again, this is going to your point.
So, you know, so. So there are different stages in producing academic research.
Some of those are more managing tasks. When you sort of, you know, maybe, you know, cleaning up a paper and resubmitting it versus,
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,
where the evidence is showing that women who have suffered as opposed to kind of resubmitting papers or type tying them up.
So. So that would be some, you know, some great place to hide. That would kind of fit with that that kind of person.
Very interesting. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's.
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,
to their working time in what have been the impacts on their productivity.
And I think that research provides, you know, if we can see that rates are just meeting and making activity,
those with higher childcare, Bardhan and in interactions to their productive and have been women in academia.
And those are the ones that have been suffering the most. So I've got a long line of further thoughts on that topic.
But unfortunately, doing an injustice to those questions, given we've got so little time left.
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.
I wish she's coming with a follow up. Could you control the data warehouse and look at situations where some fathers have taken
shared parental leave since the new policy came in and how that might affect roles?
I guess this goes to the point of is the hysteresis in in behaviours?
Once you've changed a few nappies, you kind of get with the programme. It's not actually so terrible after all.
And the men who do stay home when their children are born might be more likely to step up now or in due course.
As we were discussing earlier,
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.
And again. So my understanding is it takes a shared parental leave has been incredibly low.
Socio beings of two percent of those were eligible.
It sort of goes back to muddiness points about, you know, really having to kind of get gender changes in gender norms,
not just by offering policies, but in a way by incentivising people to take up those policies, I think, with their shared parental leave.
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,
it never really happens. So I don't think so.
Again,
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.
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,
but the households which follow the alternative model and sort of see what happens there.
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,
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.
So the 20 percent being furloughed. And what happened to them?
I think that's a really interesting group to follow up at the time.
So we've got questions of various clusters of them.
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.
And I think without wanting to go into Lucy, that's your question.
Thank you for it. I might avoid getting into deep nature versus nurture and or discussions about whether we have to put
up with gender inequality and say that we're actually just going to do what we can to address it.
Anyway, but unless, Sarah, we it if you wanted to come in on that, let me allow you to.
But otherwise, let me pause. I think the cross-country comparison offers a great opportunity to study this nature vs. nature.
I mean, when you look at another kind of a study is looking at second generation immigrants,
they all face the same sort of institutions because they are all in the same countries,
say second generation immigrants in the U.S. But they come from very different backgrounds.
And in their behaviour in terms of gender, what they do at home and also female or source participation, etc. is totally different.
So really, it is it is about gender, gender roles.
And if it is about biology, I mean, technology can easily solve.
You know, right now, I'm sure it would be easier to the incentive to do that.
And so I think you're right.
So thanks for the question, Lucy. But we will Will's dispatch that away very swiftly.
Move. Moving on. So on the kind of where the time come from.
Question. This is a follow up from S.L. What about time spent on social interactions with friends?
Did women get a raw end of the deal there? I mean, implicitly, I guess the answer is yes.
You can't spend that much more time looking after the children and maintaining the richness and diversity of your social networks.
CEO goes on to say men keep their sacred boys not out.
I have to say, this man didn't. We didn't we didn't have that level of detail.
But she's so I researched the study of male and female mental health.
And I think, you know, the conclusion from that study was that the increased family responsibility was partly to blame.
Further deterioration, the greater deterioration in women's mental health.
But actually, the women who experienced a greater deterioration of mental health with those who pre Kovik had the biggest social networks.
So it's sort of, you know. So my interpretation of that is, in a sense, neither women, Norman, got to have that girl.
So that men's night out.
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.
What we know from, again, Kanyon studies in the arrival of children,
which is similar similar shock to what we've experienced with Corbitt in terms of childcare demands on households.
We know that that women give up Nesher and they give up on personal care activities
and leisure socialising and in it's part of leisure and going out with friends,
going to the gym as well. It's a social activity. And women keep that up in order to increase childcare.
So and we also see that historically when, you know,
female labour force participation has increased quite substantially since the 70s, childcare time hasn't decreased.
So women are not spending less time with their children. What are they doing then with that?
You know, with how can they manage an 80s leisure time and personal care to some extent?
So both historically and in cross sections, we we observe the same thing.
Something's got to give. Yeah, that makes sense.
So now many parents certainly in my situation,
having three children who go out to educational provision elsewhere have a deep appreciation of the value that teachers provide.
Post this Penderecki. Hopefully we all have an appreciation value of teachers before it as well.
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,
but actually caring for the sick and the isolated across the economy.
So it's a much broader zoomed out kind of question.
Do you think that this renewed appreciation for carers, perhaps the NHS more generally and for teachers in particular, caring?
Could this give a kind of fillip, a bit of a push to the caring economy?
Along the lines, Sandy suggests, of the women's budget group report.
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,
is for the government to take this kind of carer's lens and gender lines into their budgets.
So, you know, we're talking about policy that that would be one way forward.
I think there is a fundamental distinction between what teachers and health care workers do and what parents do in these suits.
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,
well, so why is it different for parents and say for teachers, teachers that choose to be teachers?
But, you know, they basically parents, parents choose to be parents.
But if you have, say, a you know, a fake family member, you don't choose that.
Right. So so, you know. So the arguments would be why?
Or teachers didn't choose, you know, when when they were choosing to to teach or to become teachers.
They didn't they didn't choose to have a situation where they would have to deal with this sort of crisis.
Whereas when you become a parents, you know, you become a parent for all your life and no matter what.
Right. So. So then so. So I think that is why it is so difficult to get this message across in some circles
that women are really struggling because the underlying sort of assumption is,
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,
but other papers that are coming out to say, you know, nobody over oversaw this.
And really, it is a lot of work and it's having a negative impact on women.
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.
So but I think we are making data on analogue or analogy to to other carers.
It's always tricky because of the nature of parenting. But maybe Farrah has a different view.
No, I was just I was just reflecting actually, I'm a bit less optimistic than so.
I've forgotten those is at least a question. Do you see you see, it was sending Sunday's story Sunday.
Yeah. I mean, we care for the carers, but they were just basically the NHS carers.
We're not gonna pay them any more.
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.
So, you know, I think, you know, I think we are a timely reminder of all the caring that was done would be good.
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.
So we work on this kind of social values. And so it's not just the economic incentives and the government policy.
But, I mean, you're delivering a bit. Oh, gee, I'm running out of time to be quick.
So this is science. Paul's question, really, because a lot a lot of this is about societal expectations and effectively cultural trends.
How do we what can we do to move this along quicker?
You know, the various stats suggesting that the rate of change.
Several millennia before we hit something resembling. I exaggerate but gender equality.
What might we do to help accelerate progress?
So, I mean, you know, I think measures such as, you know, it's a real shame,
actually, that, you know, at a point too much gender inequality is facing a setback.
The government suspended publication of the gender pay gap, the data, because in a way,
I think that was really useful as a way of highlighting the issue and also giving individuals something to sort of work with.
Yes. You know, so, you know, I think, you know, it's achieving may just, you know,
social and cultural changes probably beyond the the capacity of any individual economists.
But, you know, in general, you know, highlighting the problem, I think is a really important start.
So, you know, I really do hope that the government continues with the gender pay gap reporting and that companies you know,
that, you know, what we want is for companies to see reducing their gender pay gap as a sign of their own individual success.
I think that would be that would be really. I think it's very fair since we're running out of time.
I just want to get that takes for the government to adopt gender equality, not just policies that challenge that gender division of Labour.
It if not enough to compensate women exposed for the extra care.
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.
Well, they're both great answers to what was truly the toughest question, which I to the end.
My apologies to those of you who ask questions that I didn't get around to answering.
I could have kept going for another at least half an hour, maybe, maybe much longer.
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.
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.
So for those of you tuning in, we have one more.
In fact, two more in this series. The Session with Marianne Mazza of Kotto.
Next week has been postponed. We'll be back in touch. Keep your eye on the Web site for the change in diet.
But we have confirmed ready to go is Dr. Yulieski from the Bank of England,
who's been managing editor children while sorting out the monetary and, well, the banks thinking on the pandemic.
So she'll be joining us for a tale of two crises covered, 19.
And the financial system on the 14th of October.
So it remains for me to thank Almudena and Sara for your work, for your insights,
for everything you're doing here, and for joining me today with the Oxford Martin School.
Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks.