Flexible working – good for gender equality at home?

There has been a significant increase in flexible working in the last two decades, especially during Covid. But there is disagreement about the effects of this – does it create an opportunity for more equal division of housework and childcare, or reinforce traditional gender divisions?

Types of work

Previous research has focused on individuals, and often looked only at routine housework such as cooking and cleaning, but Understanding Society data allow us to look at couples, and at different types of housework. This distinction is important, because in heterosexual couples men are still more likely to do infrequent non-routine tasks, such as gardening and DIY, while women traditionally do the ones which are ‘coded’ female: housework and childcare, which are usually more frequent and more time-consuming.

We were also able to consider the type of flexible work involved: working at home, reduced hours, or flexitime. Each of these might have different effects by offering people different amounts of time at home. The data also allow us to look at couples where only the woman uses flexible working, those where only the man does, and households in which both or neither do.

Our thinking

It was important to look at couples, because previous research has often looked at individuals, but lives within a household are linked. Each family member’s life will have an effect on the others’ lives.

We also wanted to consider factors such as time availability. Men still traditionally work longer, less flexible hours, and this will naturally affect how much time they have left for domestic work, regardless of their views on who should be doing the ‘chores’. We wanted to know whether:

if only the man works flexibly, does his domestic burden increase and his wife/partner’s decrease?
if it’s only the wife who works flexibly, does her domestic burden increase, and the husband’s decrease?
if both work, does the wife’s domestic burden decrease, and the husband’s increase?

We looked at the ‘work-family border’, too, which may be less distinct when someone is working flexibly. Because childcare is still largely seen as a ‘female’ task, men working flexibly may use the extra time for something else. So we also asked whether flexible working changes this aspect of the domestic burden.

Looking at different types of housework, we wanted to see if flexible working changed the pattern of women being more likely to do routine tasks such as cooking, washing, and cleaning, and men doing non-routine things like gardening and DIY.

We also considered different types of flexible working. Some change the amount of time available, so we asked if the effects would be more pronounced for reduced (or ‘compressed’) hours, and homeworking, than for flexitime, which frees up less time.

Using the data

We used Waves 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 of Understanding Society, and looked at 7,825 couples of working age (18-65) who both worked and either lived together or were married. In order to look at the gender division of housework, we looked only at heterosexual couples. We examined their answers to questions about hours spent on grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, washing, gardening, and DIY – and whether the answers matched. We considered whether one or both worked flexibly, and whether they had any children, and took their level of occupation into account. We also looked at income, and whether one earned more than the other, perhaps giving them more bargaining power in any discussion of the ‘chores’.

Basic findings

We found clear gender inequality in housework hours within couples. Women did 4-8 hours more housework per week than their husbands/partners, and the disparity was more pronounced when women worked flexibly (whether their husband did too, or not).

For traditionally ‘female’ housework tasks – shopping, cooking, cleaning, and washing – it was mostly the woman who did these. These tasks were mainly done by men in fewer than 20% of couples. For traditionally ‘male’ tasks – DIY and gardening – the ratio was reversed. Women mainly did these in fewer than 20% of couples.

For childcare, the difference was even more pronounced. Men did most of the childcare in fewer than 5% of couples – and the gender inequality in childcare was greater when women worked flexibly.

What we’ve learnt

We made four important findings:

When women work flexibly, it significantly increases their housework burden regardless of whether their husbands also use flexible working. Gender norms in the UK are fairly traditional, encouraging women to derive their identity more from their family role than from work, so when they use flexible working, they tend to do more household labour, blurring the border between family and work.

Even when only men use flexible working arrangements, their contribution to housework stays largely unchanged. Men prioritise work over family, and the unequal gender division of housework is reinforced rather than reduced. It may be that this is partly down to men being more likely to use flexitime, which creates less spare time than the other types of flexible working, making for less work-family integration.

Women’s increased domestic burden as a result of working flexibly mainly applies to routine housework tasks such as cooking, washing, and cleaning. This may be down to how much time these tasks demand, as well as the gender norm which says these tasks are female ones. On top of this, though, when only the woman in the household works flexibly, she also takes on more of the non-routine tasks, such as DIY, which are ‘male-coded’. When men alone use flexible working, they only reduce their wives’ grocery shopping burden, because this is seen as less ‘female’ than cooking, washing, and cleaning. Flexible working also leaves wives’ heavy burden of childcare generally unchanged, regardless of who is working flexibly.

Compared to flexible work schedules, reduced work hours and homeworking (which reduces commuting time) can more directly increase the amount of time devoted to the household and increase wives’ domestic burden. Also, both reduced hours and homeworking blur the border between work and family, increasing women’s domestic burden.

Overall, instead of providing an opportunity for a more egalitarian division of housework, flexible working exacerbates the situation, increasing women’s already heavy domestic burden, and maintains or reinforces women’s disadvantaged position. Entrenched traditional gender norms mean that couples structure their work and family time in gendered ways. To change this, we need to see ideological change alongside workplace change.

Read the research