Change in women’s work burden and gender norms of unpaid care work after the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in India

1.1COVID-19 situation and care work burden

Research shows that women’s vulnerability surges during disastrous times like flood, natural calamity and war [13, 14]. This happens due to presence of the already existing inequality and lower quality of life women predominantly suffer from, spikes even up during tough times with the additional responsibilities vested upon them. The effect of such escalating burden on women, may prove to be much long-lasting and harmful than the disaster itself [9] and are capable of regressing the civilization beyond thoughts.

The COVID-19 situation is not much different and came up with an unprecedented phenomenon where preventive measures confined human being at home. Along with the usual unpaid reproductive care work; sanitization, disinfecting and cleaning work have increased heavily. Besides, due to the declaration of a nationwide lockdown in many countries; school, college, offices got completely shut down. Closure of schools, day care centres and crèches naturally increased infant and child care work burden at home and the continuous presence of all family members at home due to office closure and introduction of work from home option, have increased the total care work burden of the family.

In countries like India, managing this care work burden became increasingly difficult. This is because in India, nationwide lockdown was declared on 24^th March, 2020, confining all members of a family at home and thus heavily increasing the overall care work burden of the family [14]. In June 2020, the unlockdown process started, initially for essential sectors and later for other non-essential sectors. Unorganized sectors and organized sectors other than software, BPO and those heavily relying on online system started regularising employees’ physical presence. However, all schools, colleges and universities remained fully closed in most states of India. After that, when slowly things started getting back to normal, the second wave broke out in India during the middle of March, 2021 and continued until the end of June, 2021. This second wave proved to be much more deadly in India. During April 2021, India was one of the leading countries in terms of number of daily COVID affected cases. States like West Bengal, Maharastra, Kerala, Karnataka, Adhra Pradesh, Delhi, Tamilnadu, Uttar Pradesh had the highest number of active cases [15]. As a result, lockdown was again imposed. For example, in West Bengal, lockdown due to second wave of COVID-19 started during May’ 2021 and continued until July, 2021. From August, 2021 workplaces started reopening again. However, during the period of this study, i.e. until September 2021, all schools, colleges and Universities remained fully closed. Such a situation, when schools, colleges and universities remained totally closed with no assurance of reopening date and workplaces remaining open, may have called for a trade-off between women’s family life and work life; especially in countries like India, where women are considered to be the primary caregiver of children and family. Or, it might so happen that men have come forward to shoulder care work burden more than earlier, leading to gender equilibrium. Because, previous studies have shown that at some instances, disastrous time have altered gendered role and have favored women taking opportunity of the same to enter in productive economy [16, 17]. But, if the first option holds true and women actually took over more and more unpaid care work, the burden that arose out of the COVID-19 pandemic will further increase role stereotyping and gendered work burden on women.

Research shows that both men and women equally perceive the importance of doing familial chores, but men usually set it aside for women to perform [18]. Research conducted during the early period of the COVID-19 outbreak in USA shows that in families with dual earning parents, women have been significantly compromised with their professional work time more than men [19]. Studies conducted in Australia [20], Italy [21] and Spain [22] show that whereas the gendered-children care gap has been reduced with increased father’s time with children, mother’s unpaid work time has increased disproportionately too. However, a study conducted in Italy also showed that in families with both parents working, men spent more time on care work, in case his partner had to commute to the office [21]. Similar findings are observed in Germany in a study conducted from a different angle of cognitive dimension. Here, women remained concerned about family and care work more and men were concerned about labor market and economy; thus enhancing the existing cognitive gendered care burden of women [23].

As reflected from past research on change in women’s work during a crisis, the impact of COVID-19 pandemic is presumed to be more negative on women [24]. Most research on changing work situations of women at home after the COVID-19 outbreak concluded that care work done by women has been increased during the pandemic, especially during the lockdown. But this is more important in countries like India where gendering of unpaid work is prominent and a worsening of the situation may toll high, not only on economic outcomes, but also will hinder overall development. Besides, the available research has been done in the early phase of pandemic and as most countries did not face a stepwise ‘unlockdown process’, the current scenario of work burden on women needs to be explored. Additionally, in most Indian states, educational institutes are still not open, resulting into continuous child care need at home. This study, done in July-September, 2021, i.e. after around one and half years of COVID-19 outbreak will address the situation where work demand at both outside and inside the household is high. The existing studies do not categorically measure if the burden of work interferes in the quality of life of the women. Also, these existing studies lack a differentiation among the categories of women according to their past and present employment. Hence, how the status of care work changes in women who have become jobless in contrast to those who have newly entered to the job market need to be analysed, along with women with unchanged status of paid work, to understand the new normal of the social norms.

The primary objective of this study is to investigate how job roles of women in form of both paid work and unpaid care work, have changed during COVID scenario. Additionally, this study will measure the change in total work burden on women due to COVID-19 outbreak. Along-with these two major objectives, the study will also focus on gender roles in unpaid care work during COVID-19. Additionally, the study aims to identify the difference of work burden among four work group cohorts- (i) working group (in paid work throughout), (ii) care group (in household care work throughout), (iii) entry group (entered in paid work after the COVID-19 outbreak), (iv) exit group (terminated their paid work upon COVID-19 outbreak). A logistic regression model of work burden among these groups will be formulated using demographic and work-role variables.

2.1Sampling

This is a single cross-sectional study, conducted through a questionnaire survey on 691 married women chosen using simple random sampling technique from West Bengal, which is one of the worst affected states in India with COVID-19 pandemic. Samples are chosen from urban, suburban and rural areas of six major and most populated districts of West Bengal, namely-Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, Burdwan, South 24 Pargana and North 24 Pargana. These six districts are chosen as a geographical region of interest for having the maximum number of COVID-19 cases in the state of West Bengal. The study was performed between July and September 2021, almost one and a half years after the initial COVID-19 outbreak in India. The survey was done through telephonic conversation, electronic form submission method and distribution of printed questionnaire and recollection.

2.2Instrument

This study used a quantitative research method, exerted through a structured questionnaire comprising of 31 items, related to the respondent’s demographic characteristics, work status and job role; within and outside home and before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. The questionnaire had direct questions about age, education, income [25], residence and whether any family member suffered from COVID-19. Work status and job roles before and after the COVID-19 outbreak, were asked separately. Sixteen Likert scale items were included in the questionnaire to measure the work burden and the gender role of women’s work.

2.3Measurement of work burden and its change

The questionnaire has two sections to measure before and after the COVID-19 work burden situation. In one section of the questionnaire, status, nature and hours of paid and care work are asked. This is an objective way of measuring the level of engagement to either kind of work before pandemic and at present time. However, as many experts emphasize the measurement of impact of work burden in terms of sleep, leisure and personal care [26, 27]; ergonomic impact of work (fatigue, somatic pain) and psychosocial impact of work (stress, leisure, entertainment) has been measured in this study through a 5 point Likert scale items. A total of ten such items were initially included in the questionnaire. Further, with reliability testing and factorization, eight items are taken into account for developing the scale to measure perceived work burden and its change.

2.4Measurement of gendering of work

The questionnaire has six items related to gender norms of work as perceived by the respondents, chosen according to a mini focus group discussion comprising of five individuals with high level of expertise in gender studies and human resource development [28, 29]. The response of each gender related question was measured using a 5 point Likert scale, where the least possible score (1) has been attributed to absolute non-gendering and the median (3) score has been considered as gender-indifferent situation. A principal component analysis has been conducted to find out main underlying factors of gendering. By applying varimax rotation, the weight of each component under a certain factor has been measured. The total score of the items under the major factor has been used as a scale of measurement of gendering (continuous data). This is done following ordinal approximation of a continuous variable [30].

A dichotomous scale of gendering (care work gendered vs. not-gendered) has also been derived from the total score under the major gendering factor. This has further been used as the dependent variable of the logistic regression model, in which demographic variables, work dynamics and change in the care work burden are used as predictor (independent) variables. The crude odds ratio has been used for interpretation of the results.

3.1Demographic characteristics of the respondents

The median age of the respondents is 36 years, with minimum age 28 years and maximum age 63 years. Most of the respondents (63%) are graduate or post graduate, followed by high school pass outs (23%). 42% respondents belong to nuclear family. Majority respondents belong to high-middle income group (39%) with family income between 24,001/- to 47,000/- rupees per month, followed by high income group (31%, >47,000/- rupees per month) and middle income group (24%), having family income between 18,001/- to 24,000/- rupees per month. 68% are urban residents, followed by 26% residing at sub-urban area and 6% at rural area (Table 1).

3.2Work dynamics

COVID-19 has reduced women’s engagement in outdoor work (30.4%, p < .001). 11.5% respondents have reported loss of paid job (p < 0.014). There is no new entrance in the job market. Besides, though paid work hours have been reduced with thenCOVID-19 outbreak (40.65±1.53 hrs./week to 36.78±2.75 hrs./week), such change is not statistically significant (p = 0.12). But, unpaid care work has increased significantly (5.84±0.77 hr/day to 7.07±0.57 hr/day, p = 0.04) and a significant decrease in hours of rest taken per day is observed (2.84±0.35 hrs./day to 2.13±0.29 hrs./day, p =0.002) (Table 2).

The scale to measure the change in the work burden is comprised of 8 items with high reliability (alpha = 0.883). This scale has three subparts-one physical component, one psychological component of rest and one psychological component of burden as perceived by the respondents (Table 3). The PCA for each of the subpart reveals only one underlying factor, thus validating the component. From the items, a linearly transformed score of change in burden has been calculated with score equal to 50 being no difference in work burden. The mean change of burden score is 60.79. Lower limit of 95% CI being 54.51 (>50, the indifference score), provides high confidence to state that work burden has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, when the scale was categorized according to an indifference score (24 for 8 items), 62.3% respondents were found to have increased work-burden during the pandemic (Table 3). The work burden score increased in the women who had to leave paid job (mean score 76.67) more than those who had paid jobs throughout (mean score 58.32) but this is less significant (p = 0.07).

The logistic regression model shows that women’s increasing work burden during this crisis is significantly related to their increased hours of care work (p = 0.022) and more so with decreased time to take rest (p < 0.001). Also, with the increasing age of the respondents, the burden of work seemed heavier (p = 0.003). However, the burden of work was unrelated to the change in paid work (Table 4). These results are concordant to the categorical responses described above.

3.3Gendering of work

Through principal component analysis, two underline factors are derived. The major factor among these two is taken into account, which consisted of four items with good correlation. The most important component of gendering is “male partner not contributing to care work”, with a high median score (4 out of five). The highest component loading is for the item describing conflict between care work and the paid work. The minor factor of gendering is based on the decreased freedom of choosing work by women during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, most of the respondents who have paid work, revealed that they were not expected or pressurized to leave the paid work during this crisis (median score of 1 out of 5, indicating absolute non-gendering of the item). By summating the scores of the items under the major factor, the status of gendering has been dichotomized according to the indifference score (which is 12 out of 20). As per the result, gendering of work during the COVID-19 pandemic was not very obvious as 40.3% women are observed to face gendering in their care work, whereas 59.7% did not report so (Table 5).

The logistic regression model has two continuous predictors; age and family size, both being non-contributory to the gendering of work. However, among categorical demographic variables, women from urban areas faced significantly less gendering (OR = 0.379, 95% CI = 0.185-0.776, p = 0.008) and those from high income group families also faced less gendering in care work (OR = 0.177, 95% CI = 0.034-0.917, p = 0.039). Work status dynamics during COVID-19 have very significant roles in gendering of care work. Women who had to exit from paid work, faced the major hit, as they were pushed to care work more than their male counterparts with OR of 9.27 (95% CI = 2.49-34.57, p < 0.001). On the other hand, women who were only in care work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic also faced gendering of work than those who had paid work throughout the same period (OR = 2.85, 95% CI = 1.22-6.65, p = 0.015). Women who had increased work burden during the period are observed to have faced gendering in their care work (OR = 3.9, 95% CI = 1.88-8.17, p < 0.001) (Table 6).