Work and Family Disadvantage: Mechanisms of Gender Gaps in Paid Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of mechanisms driving the increase in gender inequality in paid work during the pandemic to address existing disagreement about the relative relevance of labor market and work-family conflict processes. Using panel data from the United States Current Population Survey (CPS), we examine four mechanisms in an integrated analysis that explicitly includes single-parent households and assesses the moderating role of women’s economic position relative to their partners. The results indicate that increases in gender inequality during the pandemic were largely driven by a direct gender mechanism in households with children and partly driven by gender differences in pre-pandemic labor market positions and the higher prevalence of women in lower earner position relative to their partners. The higher prevalence of women among single-parent households does little to contribute to increases in gender inequality despite single parents being more negatively impacted than partnered women and men.