The impact of COVID-19 on the gender division of childcare work in Hungary

ABSTRACT

As most other EU countries, Hungary implemented severe lockdown measures during the pandemic, including the closure of the schools and childcare facilities. This meant that for several months a vastly increased volume of childcare had to be supplied by individual households without much institutional help. In the end of May 2020, we conducted a representative survey in Hungary to find out how the pandemic affected the gendered division of these childcare duties. We found that on average, in relative terms, men have increased their contributions at roughly the same rate (by 35 percent) as women. But given that women had been doing a lot more childcare work before the pandemic, in absolute terms, women’s contributions grew significantly more than men’s and the gap between men and women has increased in absolute work hour terms. This was particularly so among a specific group of women: middle class, highly educated city-dwellers. Our data suggest that in Hungary the pandemic increased gender inequality the most among the highest educated.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• Hungary
• childcare work
• care crisis
• division of household labour
• gender

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Details on variable construction can be found in the supplementary material.

2 Only those respondents have valid value on the home office variable who were either worked at home during the effect of lockdown measures or worked at the workplace or on the premises. Those respondents who were legally still employed during the effect of lockdown measures but were on a paid or unpaid forced leave have missing values on the home office variable.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by the Budapest Office of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. The fieldwork was conducted by the Szinapszis Market Research and Consulting Ltd. The work of Júlia Koltai was funded by the Premium Postdoctoral Grant of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The work of Anikó Gregor was supported by the Academy in Exile program of University of Duisburg-Essen, and hosted by Freie Universität, Berlin.

Notes on contributors

Éva Fodor

Éva Fodor is a sociologist teaching in the Department of Gender Studies at the Central European University.

Anikó Gregor

Anikó Gregor works as a sociologist at ELTE University, Budapest, Faculty of Social Sciences. In the academic year of 2019/2020 she was a research fellow at Freie Universität Berlin (Academy in Exile program).

Júlia Koltai

Júlia Koltai is a researcher at the Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence and Assistant Professor of Sociology at ELTE University. Currently she is a visiting professor at the Central European University.

Eszter Kováts

Eszter Kováts is a PhD student in Political Science, ELTE University, Budapest.