The paper Telecommuting and gender inequalities in parents’ paid and unpaid work before and during the COVID-19 pandemic by Thomas Lyttelton, Emma Zang, and Kelly Musick won an IPUMS Time Use Research Award.
Lyttelton and colleagues use data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) and the Current Population Survey (CPS) to analyze the link between telecommuting and the gender division of labor at home and at work prior to and during the pandemic. In their innovative analyses, they match ATUS respondents in similar occupations and by gender to compare the time use patterns of parents working from home and in the workplace. They find that telecommuting reduces gender gaps in childcare but is associated with women doing more housework and experiencing more work interruptions.