Transformations in the Gender Gaps in Paid and Unpaid Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Findings from Turkey

ABSTRACT

This paper uses a unique survey conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey to analyze men’s and women’s time use under lockdown. The study finds that while men’s participation in unpaid work increased, particularly for men who switched to working from home, the relative increase for women further widened the gender gap in unpaid work. The gender gap in paid work narrowed due to relatively less employment disruption for women and a relatively higher decrease in men’s paid work. The total workload of employed women reached levels that make it hard to sustain a decent work–life balance. Disparities in unpaid work among women by education and employment status decreased, reflecting how purchasing power became somewhat irrelevant under the pandemic measures. These findings unveil simultaneously the fragility of the work–life balance conditions faced by employed women and a window of opportunity created by men’s increased participation in unpaid work.

HIGHLIGHTS

• During the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey, women’s unpaid work time almost doubled, while men’s quadrupled.

• Women experienced lower employment disruption and less decrease in paid work time than men.

• Employed women saw an alarming intensification in their overall workload.

• Men’s unpaid work increased substantially due to working from home and lower employment hours.

• COVID-19 has highlighted the need for work–life balance policies and for investment in social care.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• unpaid work
• Turkey

JEL Codes:

• J16
• J22
• O52

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2020.1849764

Notes

1 There are a few surveys reporting the changes in paid/unpaid work time by share of women/men experiencing an increase/decrease, but not the quantitative change measured in hours or frequency as the UK, Indian, and Turkish surveys mentioned above. See, for example, UN Women (2020).

2 Inclusion of questions in the survey on paid and unpaid work was sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Turkey Country Office. The time-use question was kept the same as in 2018 to ensure comparability, and seven new questions were added on changes in employment status and paid and unpaid work hours.

3 Turkey was under a stay-at-home order until the end of May but with gradual easing of restrictions during the week and a complete lockdown on weekends and national holidays. May 18–19 is a national holiday so the survey was conducted under a complete lockdown; yet the TUS questions takes the previous week (week of May 11) as the reference point. So the questions were answered with respect to a weekday where some people might have gone to their workplaces, but where many workplaces and public spaces were still closed down. Conducting the survey during a national holiday enabled reaching more employed and non-employed people at home and improving the representativeness of the survey.

4 The time-use question employs the recall method in one-hour slots (asking respondents to report on how they spent the 24-hour slots on a typical weekday in the previous week). As these are wider than the ten-minute intervals used in the most detailed time-use surveys (such as the 2014–15 Time Use Survey by Turkstat), it is not possible to determine precisely how long respondents spent on a particular activity, and the results might overstate the actual time spent on a particular activity. The case of reporting multiple activities during the hour, however, was rather limited. See Appendix I for more details.

5 This is captured through a question to the respondent as to whether her/his spouse’s unpaid work time has increased, decreased, or remained the same during the pandemic lockdown conditions.

6 When job loss is measured as a share of employed pre-pandemic, it is relatively higher for women. Thirty-one percent of women who were employed pre-pandemic and 18 percent of men employed pre-pandemic stopped working for pay with the pandemic (see Table A1). 

7 Employment statistics from the Household Labor Force Survey by the Turkish Statistical Institute (2020a) show that the employment rates for men declined from 65.7 percent in 2018 to 60.2 percent in February 2020 and 57.4 percent in May 2020. The same figures for women are 29.4 percent (annual 2018), 26.3 percent (February 2020), and 25.8 percent (May 2020).

8 We note that in response to a separate control question on the change in employment hours due to pandemic impact, women and men who continue to be in employment report about a 20 and 18 percent decrease, respectively, in their weekly employment hours, which is consistent with the decrease we find in the daily work hours of employed women and men in response to the time-use question.

Additional information

Funding

The field survey was partly supported by UNDP Country Office Turkey.

Notes on contributors

İpek İlkkaracan

İpek İlkkaracan is full-time Professor of Economics at Istanbul Technical University, an Associate Editor of Feminist Economics, and a Research Associate with the Levy Economics Institute.

Emel Memiş

Emel Memiş is full-time Associate Professor of Economics at Ankara University, an Associate Editor of Feminist Economics, and a Research Associate with the Levy Economics Institute.