Journal of Gender Studies

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Paid and unpaid work during the Covid-19

pandemic: a study of the gendered division of
domestic responsibilities during lockdown

Obja Borah Hazarika & Sarmistha Das

To cite this article: Obja Borah Hazarika & Sarmistha Das (2021) Paid and unpaid work during the
Covid-19 pandemic: a study of the gendered division of domestic responsibilities during lockdown,
Journal of Gender Studies, 30:4, 429-439, DOI: 10.1080/09589236.2020.1863202

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2020.1863202

Published online: 18 Dec 2020.

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JOURNAL OF GENDER STUDIES
2021, VOL. 30, NO. 4, 429–439
https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2020.1863202

Paid and unpaid work during the Covid-19 pandemic: a study of

the gendered division of domestic responsibilities during
lockdown
Obja Borah Hazarikaa and Sarmistha Dasb
a
Department of Political Science, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh, Assam, India; bDepartment of Sociology, Tezpur
University, Tezpur, Assam, India

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The Covid-19 pandemic and the strategies implemented to deal with it have Received 7 July 2020
had economic and societal repercussions all over the world. In India, Accepted 7 December 2020
a nationwide lockdown was initiated on 25 March 2020 which continued KEYWORDS
in a diluted form as we were conducting the interviews for the paper in Lockdown; housework;
July 2020. The lockdown brought activities outside the home to a standstill childcare; paid work;
and people were expected to stay indoors in order to ensure social distan­ gendered division of
cing and break the chain of infection. The lockdown sparked its own domestic labour
problems and triggered discussions on issues including economic hardship
and domestic violence. The question of how domestic responsibilities are
shared among adults in families has also come to the forefront of debate. As
hired part-time help was discontinued under lockdown, parents who had
hitherto outsourced childcare and housework were suddenly left to fend for
themselves. This article attempts to explore the manner in which such
unpaid domestic responsibilities, especially childcare, were shared between
parents in middle-class homes. The gendered nature of this division of
housework and care work, and its varied implications on the paid work
and careers of mothers and fathers, is the focus of inquiry.

Introduction
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought challenges to people all over the world. The measures taken to
counter and control the disease have had different impacts on people depending on a variety of
factors such as gender, race, class, caste, professions, and age. One of the changes imposed in some
countries, including India, was that of a nationwide lockdown which was imposed on the whole
country from 25th of March 2020 and which continued in some diluted form for the next six months
(when the article was submitted for peer-review). This lockdown meant that, in order to ensure social
distancing, people were not supposed to venture out of their homes. The lockdown sparked off
many socio-economic and political issues such as the migrant worker crisis, where lakhs of informal-
sector workers who were earning their livelihoods in other states began making arduous journeys
home, on foot, given that all transport and employment had come to a standstill. There were gender
implications of the lockdown as well. Reports shed light on the rise in domestic violence due to the
lockdown (Agence France-Presse, 2020). Domestic violence during the Covid-19 pandemic has been
termed a ‘shadow pandemic’ by the United Nations (Mlambo-Ngcuka, 2020).
Added to this, reports indicate that women took up a disproportionately large share of the
housework and childcare responsibilities during the lockdown (Ascher, 2020; Kottasova, 2020).

CONTACT Obja Borah Hazarika Obja11@gmail.com Department of Political Science, Dibrugarh University, India
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
430 O. BORAH HAZARIKA AND S. DAS

A study in the United Kingdom by the Institute of Fiscal Studies and the UCL Institute of Education of
3,500 families with two heterosexual parents underscored the gender imbalance in sharing paid
work and domestic responsibilities. The responses of the survey showed:
Mothers are more likely than fathers to have left paid work since February. Among mothers and fathers who are
still in paid work, mothers have seen a bigger proportional reduction in hours of work than fathers. Among those
doing paid work at home, mothers are more likely than fathers to be spending their work hours simultaneously
trying to care for children (Andrew et al., 2020).

There are several studies on the impact of the lockdown on women in India. For instance, a rapid
assessment report covering 200 women from 11 districts in Assam noted that 86% of women moved
out of paid work, 5% worked in partial capacities and only 9% continued working full-time during
lockdown.1 The assessment also highlighted that 68% of women did not get paid during the
lockdown, 35% reported that they performed all the housework while 58% stated that the house­
work was shared among the female members of the family and 13% reported an increase in
housework primarily because during lockdown all family members were in the house at all times.
The respondents of this rapid assessment report were between the age of 16 and 85, engaged as
casual wage labourers, domestic workers, regular salaried employees and in household enterprises.

Domestic work and pandemic: revisiting the literature

Domestic work has long been portrayed as women’s work across the world. Thinkers such as August
Comte justified women’s domestication by asserting that men protected women by separating them
from life outside the home (Rogers, 1980). The domestic science movement – now largely discre­
dited – sought to elevate work in the home to a scientific and academically relevant endeavour.
However, in doing so it continued to justify women’s absence from paid work and positioned them
as supporting men’s careers, rather than pursuing their own (ibid). Ehrenreich and English (1976)
noted that cleaning was enforced on women as morally essential based on a doubtful ‘germ theory’
which suggested that if everything in the house was not dust free then this was akin to unlawful
killing. Such extreme claims helped to manufacture tasks for women in the home and hence justified
housework as a full-time vocation, keeping women away from the realm of paid work (Rogers, 1980).
The idea of maternal deprivation has also been used to justify women’s domestication. This
implies that children will suffer if their mother, or a substitute for their mother, does not shower them
with constant attention (Mead, 1962). Following the Second World War, this idea was used to compel
women to leave their wartime jobs and re-enter unpaid domestic work by making them feel guilty
about the permanent traumas their children might experience should they leave them to work
outside the home (ibid). The scientific basis for maternal deprivation is absent and studies have
highlighted the benefits of dual career households. For instance, it has been established by Knaub
(1986, p. 436) that children of dual career households recognize ‘. . . the value of having two parents
provide positive role models for the world of work as well as in nurturance roles, the perception that
the lifestyle encourages the development of their own independence, and awareness of the obvious
financial advantages . . .’1 (see also Pilarz & Hill, 2014). Employed mothers have also been reported to
be beneficial for a child’s growth as shown by Hoffman and Youngblade (1999) who noted that less
authoritarian control over children is used by employed mothers in general and that children are
held to higher educational expectations by married employed mothers.2
Discrimination against women in the non-domestic sphere also facilitates their domestication. For
instance, restriction in educational opportunities can be justified in cultures where girls are not
expected to engage in paid work outside the home. In these contexts with regards to hiring,
promotion and wages, it is argued that women need not be prioritized as they have their husbands
to support them. This position particularly disadvantages mothers, widows and women who do not
seek to marry. Men still maintain control over top positions in the socio-economic hierarchy and have
a monopoly over important institutions such as political and legal systems, defence, police,
 JOURNAL OF GENDER STUDIES 431

commercial industries, education and media. These factors all contributed to the continued identi­
fication of women with the domestic sphere and men’s role in the wider workforce is reinforced,
justifying the gendered division of labour (Rogers, 1980). Despite greater numbers of women
entering the paid workforce over the years ‘Women still tend to be the last to be hired and the
first to be fired’ (International Labour Organization, 1995). Women face disproportionate job losses
during economic recessions compared to men but even ‘among women, there are disproportionate
effects by race, ethnicity, age and marital status’ (Weller, 2020).
The drudgery associated with confining women to housework has been addressed extensively in
feminist literature. Feminist writers have also emphasized the need to view housework and family as
analytical frames to understand discrimination against women. Friedan (1963) in The Feminine
Mystique explored the lives of housewives in suburban America who were flooded with a wide
range of commodities to help with their housework. These women reported that despite having
a perfectly good life, with loving children and husbands and a well-equipped kitchen, they suffered
a problem which they could not articulate which Friedan dubbed the ‘problem that has no name’
(1963, p. 15). Friedan identified this suffering reported by housewives to be a consequence of their
lack of meaningful work and the drudgery of domestic work, which was mind-numbing, tedious and
unproductive. Oakley (1976), through her research, also brought out the monotony and repetitive
nature of housework. Oakley highlighted that the housework done by women went unrecognized,
lending it an invisible countenance, and mentioned that it led to loneliness and anxiety and limited
the possibility of human self-actualization. Her studies, which were conducted in the United
Kingdom, revolve around the manner in which historically industrial capitalism led to a change in
the nature of work. A separation was brought about between housework and work done outside the
home, only the latter of which came to be accepted as productive work. Such a strict division
between ‘productive’ and non-productive work was almost non-existent in pre-capitalist social
formations. Lopata’s (1971) research and Oakley’s work were attempts to reconstitute housework
as ‘work’ and not as a natural predisposition of women or an act driven by love. They challenged the
notion that housework for women sprang from an unassailable, biologically driven craving for
mopping, shopping, cleaning, and sweeping (Streeten, 2020). They foregrounded housework as
work which was unpaid and highlighted the isolation and anxiety caused by housework as well as
the low status associated with it. Marxist feminists called for production to include this labour and
the care of humans. By the 1970s it was argued by feminists that the family should be an analytical
category in studies on women’s oppression (Streeten, 2020). The significance of unpaid domestic
work for the economy was highlighted by Menon (2014, p. 15) who stated: ‘sex-based segregation of
labour is the key, to maintaining not only the family, but also the economy, because the economy
would collapse like a house of cards if this unpaid domestic labour had to be paid for by somebody,
either by the husband or the employer’. Menon (2014, p. 15) also commented on women performing
all the reproductive labour2 so that the men can go back to work the next day:

When you have an entire structure of unpaid labour buttressing the economy, then the sexual division of labour
cannot be considered to be domestic and private; it is what keeps the economy going. If tomorrow, every
woman demanded to be paid for this work that she does, either the husband would have to pay her, or the
employer would have to pay the husband. The economy would fall apart. This entire system functions on the
assumption that women do housework for love.

Fletcher’s (1978) research highlighted that, with regard to sharing of housework between two
working parents in a household, it was the wives who adjusted their housework around their
employment and not the husbands. Hartman’s (1981) research showed how American men not
only failed to help their wives with domestic work but ended up creating more of it. The term second
shift was used by Hochschild (1989) to describe how women continued to bear responsibility for
housework and childcare as their participation in the labour force increased, meaning that women
had to work two shifts every day – one at their paid work-place and the second at home; attending to
the housework and child-rearing. Many adaptions and adjustments made by mothers in order to
432 O. BORAH HAZARIKA AND S. DAS

combine paid work and family life are not made by fathers. For instance, mothers more often resign
from paid positions with the birth of their child and resume jobs when the children are older.
Mothers also accept more part-time work, so they can engage in paid work and while also perform­
ing unpaid domestic work (Baker, 2001).
In India as well, there has been an awareness of the contribution of women’s work. As early as
1938, the Constitutional Planning Committee, in anticipation of independence, created 29 sub-
committees under the Indian National Congress. The committees represented people from all
persuasions and ideologies and they also included women members. One of the sub-committees
was set up to consider the role of women in a planned economy and it produced the earliest report
focusing on working women; including artisans, forest dwellers and peasants. It included the
contribution of women engaged in many kinds of work but did not focus on housework, which
only began to be discussed in India in the form of role conflict studies from the 1970s (Chakrabotty,
1978; Mehta, 1970; Ramu, 1989). In most Indian societies women have been involved in a host of
economic activities such as agriculture, fishery and other related activities (Ghosh & Ghosh, 2014;
Singh & Vinay, 2013) but the idea of women as housewives has become the dominant idea of
middle-class women in modern times (Banerjee, 2004; Chatterjee, 1990; Chaudhuri, 1993; Pande &
Kameshwari, 1987). The idea of women as housewives has its basis in demands arising from the
political economy of the country as well as an ideological basis of being a good housewife and
domesticity which have been emphatically promoted in Indian society (Chaudhuri, 1993).
However, unlike many western societies, middle-class Indian women have been able to access
help in the home.3 In America, the unequal burden of domestic work on women has been studied
since the 1970s as central to the system of the capitalist economy and the role it played in the
reproductive labour of workers in this system. The same studies have not emerged in India as the
middle classes have outsourced this domestic labour, to a large extent, to other people of certain
castes, classes, ethnicities and genders who were easily accessible to service their homes cheaply.
With the current lockdown, and the sudden inability of this cheap labour to enter middle-class
homes to carry out the reproductive labour and care work, the issue of housework has emerged in
multiple media in India as a focal point of interest and enquiry.4

Objectives
This article focuses on the experiences of men and women (parents) in sharing household respon­
sibilities and its impact on their careers during the lockdown imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
This research, unlike the rapid assessment report mentioned above, does not reflect experiences of
adults who were faced with immediate financial and economic worries due to the lockdown and
instead focuses on experiences of career professionals with children. It sought to examine whether
an imbalance existed between mothers and fathers in the division of responsibilities for housework
and childcare, and its impact on their careers. It is argued that the lockdown impacted mothers and
fathers, when both are career professionals, in vastly different ways, with the burden of household
chores and childcare falling largely on the shoulders of the women, which adversely impacted their
professional lives compared to that of the men. Such a development indicates that the lockdown
reinforced the stereotypical division of labour within homes wherein the relationship between
spouses is hierarchized and unequal.

Methodology
The sample taken for this study comprised adults from twenty families engaged in professions,
which straddle the broad spectrum of work engaged in by the middle class. The participants resided
in the town of Dibrugarh, in the state of Assam, India. Dibrugarh is one of the prosperous districts in
the state of Assam with a high concentration of industries and modern urban infrastructure. The
concentration of industries around the district has made it a hub for massive inward migration of
 JOURNAL OF GENDER STUDIES 433

people. Hence, the district, apart from having a heterogeneous demographic profile, also has a rich
concentration of upper and middle-class population. This rich demography makes the area inter­
esting for study, as the nuances of urban middle-class families, their struggles while parenting and
dealing with the pandemic lead to the emergence of the themes found here.
As the topic under study deals with sensitive issue of parenting and the anxieties related to it,
flexibility was adopted when selecting methods for data collection. Interviews were conducted via
WhatsApp and telephone, questionnaires were sent by email and the study also drew on secondary
literature. Semi-structured interviews were held with parents from twenty families, aged between 30
and 45, with careers in professions such as teaching and law as well as the pharmaceutical, hotel and
government sectors. Interviews were conducted between 25 March and 30 May 2020, via phone, and
questionnaires were sent by email due to the inability to meet face-to-face under Covid-19 related
restrictions. The respondents were asked to send their responses via email or audio files which were
transcribed. Informed consent to use this data here was obtained from the respondents.5 The
families were chosen through purposive sampling based on age, education, heterosexuality and
employment status. This particular group was selected for study because they were urban, educated
families with both partners having an income of their own. Each family had two earning parents (only
one family reported that the woman had left her job to take care of the child during the pandemic)
and at least one child. During the lockdown, these families were contracted to carry out their paid
work from home or had significantly reduced hours of paid work outside the home. The families
comprised mothers, fathers, and children and, in four cases, paternal grandparents. These families
had been formerly reliant on maids to take care of domestic responsibilities in their houses but had
lost this help due to the lockdown. Questions focused on how the parents managed their housework
and child care; and how it impacted their careers given the changes in who did domestic work
during the lockdown.

Results
The themes from the findings, which are presented in the next section, were developed after
interactions with the respondents based on their most common refrains. All respondents noted
that their careers were adversely impacted due to an increase in domestic responsibilities. They also
all noted the pressures of home schooling and rearing of children. However, the men and women
provided starkly contrasting responses with regard to the level of housework and childcare which
they had undertaken during the lockdown. These have been presented below to highlight the
gendered experiences of domestic responsibilities during the lockdown. As there was an attempt to
avoid preconceived categories, and since the themes were developed from the data collected, this
study therefore follows conventional content analysis as outlined by Hseih and Shannon (2005).

Findings
Gendered division of domestic responsibilities during the lockdown
Dichotomous outlooks on the lockdown
The mothers and fathers interviewed for this study did not have similar outlooks towards the
implications of the lockdown on their lives. With one exception, the mothers interviewed for this
study reported being overworked and overburdened under the lockdown with responsibilities for
child-rearing, home schooling and household chores. They all stressed that without hired helpers
they had to do the sweeping, washing of clothes, cooking and other reproductive labour as well as
take care of their children. Another mother noted that the lockdown had been the ‘biggest
challenge’ she had faced since becoming a mother due to mounting household chores and the
radical alteration in the schedule for her child. This had compelled her to make drastic adjustments in
a short period of time. With regard to childcare and household responsibilities another mother
434 O. BORAH HAZARIKA AND S. DAS

noted: ‘everything has fallen on me’. The fathers (100%) in contrast when asked how the lockdown
had affected them and the absence of their helpers and nannies, said they had been impacted
positively since they got to spend more time with their children, for example being present during
meal times, which had often not been possible prior to the lockdown.

Impact of the lockdown on children and parent–child bonds

All except one of the mothers reported changed eating habits, sleeping habits and even bathroom
habits in their children. These were causes of concern for them as they ascertained that they had
adverse impacts on the health of their child/children. Some mothers (five) also commented on
weight gain in their children during the lockdown. They noted the lack of physical exercise and an
‘addiction ‘to online games. They also reported alarm over their child’s overdependence on technol­
ogy and aggressive behaviour if they tried to deny their children access to the television and tablets,
including instances where their children hid the remote-control to express their anger and an
increase in tantrums. One mother noted that being in the house was like being in a cage and that
lack of access to playmates and outdoor space was making her child irritable and difficult to manage.
There were a few positive responses as to the impact of the lockdown on children. For instance,
one father noted that due to the lockdown, his children were much more cooperative with each
other than they had been before. Parents were happy that their children were becoming technolo­
gically savvy due to online classes and approved of the time they got to spend doing ‘creative’ things
with their children. A mother pointed out that she had bonded with her son over things like
astronomy, which interested him, by reading the night sky. Another pointed out that she had taught
her child some gardening during the lockdown period. Some mothers noted that since they were
now cleaning the house and cooking food themselves, they could ensure the hygiene and nutritional
standards for their children which they said that they could not when helpers did the same work.

Home schooling: challenges, anxieties and opportunities

All the mothers except one said that it was mostly them and not the father who looked after the
child’s online schooling. Out of the fathers interviewed, only one said that he looked after the online
schooling while his wife did the household chores and attended to the other needs of their children.
One mother noted that the father only helped to set up the online learning platform and since then
she had been executing the work related to her children’s online classes.
Since the children of the parents interviewed were mostly aged between 2.5 and 10 years, they
were still in primary classes and had a lot of homework given by the teachers in online-mode. All the
mothers were unhappy with this system of education. One mother said that her child did not follow
anything during the online classes and that Youtube videos did not help a child’s learning process.
All except one of the mothers expressed that they had become full-time teachers of their children,
something which was a new and daunting experience for them. Around half of the parents inter­
viewed also spoke of fears regarding online bullying, mental anxiety and social class divisions among
students which became visible in online groups. One mother, however, responded positively
regarding the online schooling system saying that the school that her children were enrolled in
provided an age-appropriate syllabus which was easier than having to find a homeschooling syllabus
on her own and she felt that though time consuming, the assignments helped keep the children
engaged and occupied. She was the only exception out of the twenty families interviewed in her
assessment of the online schooling system in the state.
All parents, except one couple, agreed that giving ‘enormous’ amounts of homework was no way
to teach children. They also averred that increased screen-time for the children was a cause for
concern. One mother noted that making her child study during the morning hours was difficult.
Another also noticed aggression in her child when she tried to make him adhere to a scheduled form
of home study. Another mother who taught in a college pointed out that when her husband tried to
sit with the child for his online classes, he felt that child was not performing as well as the other
students in his class. She felt that this was a negative experience for the child since the father became
 JOURNAL OF GENDER STUDIES 435

irritated which in turn agitated the child. This ended up with her having to manage both her
husband and her child. She lamented that she had no time for her career since she had her hands
full with child-care and housework.

Impact of the lockdown on professional lives

On questions pertaining to the ways mothers were managing their own careers, most responded
saying their careers had taken a significant step back due to the lockdown. A mother summed up
what the others alluded to: that she had much less time for her professional work. Another mother
who was a faculty member in a teaching institute said that her career had suffered a lot and even said
that her career was ‘ruined and lost’. She gave the example of her desire to join an online Faculty
Development Programme but said that she could not do so as it would be impossible for her to
dedicate the required hours a day to the programme with her child in the house and household
chores to complete. Another mother said that she had given up her job and would resume her career
only once the pandemic was over since she had to look after her son and serve as a full-time
housekeeper and that her husband could not spare time due to excessive online ‘work from home’.
All the fathers, except one, were unabashed about prioritizing their own office work which they
said they were conducting through ‘work from home mode’. All the fathers interviewed, except one,
said that due to the lockdown and less than satisfactory internet connectivity, which was needed for
them to continue their office work, they now had to spend even more time on their computers in
order to meet work requirements, which, they said, meant they could not be significantly involved in
household chores or child-care. They said that their work life had changed a lot and was much more
taxing with the lockdown as they had become dependent on unreliable phone and internet lines.
One father noted that during lockdown it was much more taxing as coordination with colleagues
became a problem and work that usually took thirty minutes required close to three hours in the
work from home mode. All except one couple justified the inability of husbands to carry out
housework by noting that the husbands’ careers were more stressful and needed longer hours of
work, thereby reinforcing findings of previous research on the topic (Hooff, 2010, p. 24).
None of the mothers, all of whom had careers, responded in the manner which the fathers did,
which underscores that even in lockdown, despite both parents having careers, it was the mother
and not the father who had to take on child-care and complete household chores while pursuing
a career. A mother who ran a pharmacy noted that during the lockdown her workload increased
enormously as she had to take care of her daughter and look after all the housework. She noted that
despite all the housework and child-rearing falling on her shoulders during the lockdown, she
continued to visit her pharmacy regularly.
In all the cases, it was noted that if a choice had to be made between taking care of children and
doing household chores or attending to their careers during the lockdown, the mothers all chose to
sacrifice their career goals in order to attend to care-giving and housework. This was not reported by
any of the fathers. The stark contrast in parents’ experiences is exemplified in the situation of one
couple who were both faculty members in higher education institutes. The father reported managing
to write two research papers during lockdown, while the mother said that she did not write any papers
as she had to take care of her child. The findings of this study contradict some earlier studies on
domestic responsibilities such as Bach & Aarseth (2016, p. 186) in which it was reported that in countries
like Denmark, men whose partners are career women have reproduced an ‘an ideal of equality and
mutuality’ with regard to housework and care work and ‘also display a willingness to adapt in various
ways and to varying degrees to the circumstances created by their partners’ career orientation’.

Sharing of domestic responsibilities during lockdown

Mothers mostly reported that their spouses hardly contributed to household chores or with rearing/
teaching their children. The few exceptions were husbands who had already helped with tasks, such as
grocery shopping, before lockdown. Although the husbands spent slightly more time with their
children during the lockdown, this did not alleviate the mothers’ workloads. One common refrain
436 O. BORAH HAZARIKA AND S. DAS

among all except one of the mothers was that they had not received any kind of help from their
husband. Another mother noted that when there was a strict lockdown, her husband was at home and
helped with a few chores but that once the lockdown was diluted he left for his ‘work’ while she
remained inside and had to manage the chores and child-care by herself. All but one woman reported
being overburdened but almost none expected their husbands to share the housework load which
seems to suggest the more traditional position noted by Bartley et al.: ‘Wives were more traditional in
their attitudes towards gender roles . . . which may explain why they were willing to be burdened so
heavily with the low-control household tasks. They may have accepted the responsibilities for those
tasks as part of their roles as wives and mothers’ (Bartley, Blanton, & Gilliard, 2005, p. 88).

Conclusions
The fathers and mothers interviewed mostly concurred that they were overworked and overburdened
during the lockdown. The mothers were overburdened due to household chores, child-rearing and
home-schooling duties; and fathers due to ‘work from home’ with poor Internet and phone facilities.
For most mothers, their careers took a back-seat due to an increase in household chores and child-care
/online schooling. This was largely not the case for fathers, who prioritized their office work. This shows
how existent gendered aspects of family life were accentuated with the lockdown. While both parents
faced challenges to continue their careers through ‘work from home’, the ‘work from home’ of the
fathers took a more official dimension which justified their minimal involvement in household chores
and child rearing; while the mothers’ ‘work from home’ was seen as dispensable during the Covid-19
lockdown. There was a reversion to traditionally determined gender roles.
In a way, the lockdown turned back the clock of domestic sexual politics since instead of a more
equal share of household work, child-rearing and work from home, a sharp and inequitable division
of duties and responsibilities, conforming to gender stereotypes, resulted. With the removal of the
public space during the lockdown, a split of the private domain into two gendered spheres
emerged – areas such as kitchens and rooms dedicated to child-rearing ended up as women’s
spaces, while the men mostly occupied rooms in which the technological devices such as laptops
and wifi were located.
There was just one family out of the twenty interviewed where both parents reported that they
shared domestic responsibilities equally and each parent reported being satisfied with their partner’s
involvement in housework and care-work. This was a family where the father’s job was located in
a different town and during pre-lockdown times the child had remained with the mother while the
father used to be home only at weekends. The mother noted that she was glad that her husband
could now be around every day. Families where the fathers and mothers were stationed away from
each other and managed to join their partner prior to the lockdown welcomed it as it enabled both
spouses to be at home at all times. In these cases, the children could experience a life with two
parents at home which was not possible before the lockdown and would again not be possible once
the parents resumed paid work in two different locations.
Another notable insight, which was drawn from the interactions with the respondents, was the
overwhelming dependence of these families on working women from economically weaker classes
who had helped them as nannies and maids prior to the lockdown. Without this support system,
women such as those surveyed in this study would find it either impossible to pursue careers, or
would have had their career progression severely stunted. This highlights the class aspect of the
gender dynamic. Several mothers reported that since their husbands did not a ‘lift a finger’ with
regard to housework during the lockdown, they were now buying a range of household appliances
such as electric mops, oven toaster grillers, dish-washers and so on, so that if access to maids was
curtailed again due to another lockdown, they could deal with housework more efficiently.
Moreover, the process of leaving home for work every day before Covid-19 was a source of
catharsis for all but one of the mothers interviewed and it seems that patriarchal oppressions operate
differently in the public and private spheres. The demands and norms of patriarchy passed on
 JOURNAL OF GENDER STUDIES 437

through culture, religion and tradition mean that for most mothers, even if they have careers which
are of the same rank as that of their husbands, when at home they remain responsible for household
chores and child-rearing; that is they fulfill gender-specific roles because this is culturally expected of
them. The process of stepping out of the house to work means that they have a space to escape and
transcend some of these expectations. One mother noted that prior to the lockdown although she
was eligible to apply for child-care leave she did not do so because she knew that she would then be
expected to bear the responsibilities of housework and serve her family, including her in-laws, who
lived in the same house. With the lockdown, she had the burden of all the housework and child-care
just as she had feared. She noted that being inside her home was like being ‘in jail’ as she had to do
hours of work which was repetitive, physically demanding and which went unnoticed. During the
lockdown, women lost the opportunity to leave their homes and adopt a professional and less
gendered persona. Instead, they returned to traditional roles, facing expectations of docility and
obedience which led to feelings of loss of recognition, identity and a sense of agency.
The migrant worker crisis (Chisti, 2020), increase in domestic violence (Mlambo-Ngcuka, 2020) and
imbalance in the division of responsibilities for paid work, housework and child-care between
parents, among other issues resulting from Covid-19 counter-measures, are in some part a result
of policies taken by governments on the advice of medical experts and institutions which have little
regard for the lived realities of the citizens affected. In India, these measures have been linked to
recommendations from institutes such as the Indian Council of Medical Research, the World Health
Organization and the National Disaster Management Authority. There have been some measures
taken to rectify the adverse consequences of the lockdown. For instance, a recent report by the
National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) (Belur, 2020) stated that online
schooling for pre-primary children was not advisable. On the basis of this, the government autho­
rities in Karnataka, it was reported, would issue a notice prohibiting such classes.
The lockdown provoked new discussions on housework in India because it was the middle class
that struggled without maids and nannies, who were suddenly barred from homes because of social
distancing measures. The couples interviewed believed in gender equality but this did not translate
into equity in terms of housework and care-giving. The findings of the study, which highlight the
inconveniences and burdens faced by women in, underscore the continued imbalance in the
division of domestic responsibilities between heterosexual parents. It also highlights the manner
in which the intersection of class and gender orders our societal structures and continues to
hierarchize interactions and promote inequalities.

Notes
1. Impact of Covid-19 Lockdown on Women in Assam, Findings from a rapid Assessment by Women’s
Leadership Training Centre, April and May 2020, Women in Governance, North East Network, Action for
inclusion and empowerment Trust, Kokrajhar – Chirang Jila Sanmilita Mahila Samiti, Supported by Zubaan.
New Delhi.
2. (Reproductive labour describes the tasks which nurture future and current workers consisting of activities that
are traditionally carried out by women for low or no wages comprising of childcare, heath-care, as well as
everyday responsibilities for family members such as cleaning, shopping, cooking as well as bearing children
(Hester, H., (2018)).
3. Lecture delivered by Chaudhuri, Maitrayee on Housework and the Pandemic in the Faculty Development
Programme, held by Dibrugarh University, Assam from 26 May to 1 June 2020.
4. Lecture delivered by Chaudhuri, Maitrayee on Housework and the Pandemic in the Faculty Development
Programme, held by Dibrugarh University, Assam from 26 May to 1 June 2020.
5. Ethical clearance for this study was obtained from the Ethical Committee for Biomedical and Health Research,
Dibrugarh University, Assam.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
438 O. BORAH HAZARIKA AND S. DAS

Notes on contributors
Obja Borah Hazarika is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Dibrugarh University, Assam, India. Her current
research interests lie in the area of paradiplomacy and society and politics in Northeast India.
Sarmistha Das is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at Tezpur University, Assam, India. Her current research interests lie
in the area of livelihood and agrarian studies.

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Appendix
A total of 20 couples were contacted: eight couples were sent the questions through email. Four couples were reached
via WhatsApp. Four parents sent their responses via email, two parents via WhatsApp and 18 parents responded
through telephone conversations. Eight couples were questioned in person and their answers were collected in person.
The following communication was put to participants:
Dear Parent,
I would be very grateful if you could reply to any of the following questions which will be helpful for my paper on the
gender implications of the current lockdown with an emphasis on the experiences of working parents with primary
school-going children. Your responses will be kept anonymous.

(1) How has the lockdown since March 25th impacted your life in terms of a) child rearing; b) taking care of household
chores (especially if you have had to do without your regular house-help, nannies and other help; c) your careers.
(2) What is your view of the online mode of schooling for your children?
(3) Has the relationship between you and your child been impacted by the lockdown? If so, how?
(4) In what ways have you and your spouse been sharing the responsibilities of rearing the child and taking care of
household chores?
(5) Overall, would you say the lockdown period has increased your responsibilities as a parent? How so?
(6) Any other insights regarding the lockdown that you would like to share to help me understand any new
perspective, which you may have gained as a mother/father in this time period, regarding how differently the
lockdown has impacted men/women.