Impact of Work from Home Policy during the COVID-19 Pandemic on Mental Health and Reproductive Health of Women in Indonesia

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to assess the impact of work from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health and reproductive health of women in Indonesia. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study evaluating the impact of WFH policy on said health aspects in Indonesia.

Methods: We conducted an observational study with a cross-sectional approach using an online survey among premenopausal married women in Indonesia. The survey included the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) for psychological distress, average sexual intercourse frequency (SIF) per week, contraception use, change of menstrual pattern, and desire for having children. To analyze the effect of WFH, the participants were divided into groups based on their WFH compliance: (1) Both couples (her and her spouse) work from home, (2) Only the wife works from home, (3) Only the husband works from home, and (4) Neither works from home.

Results: 348 women were included in this study. Psychological distress occurred in 48.0% (n = 167) participants. No significant difference was found between the WFH groups (χ²[3, N = 348] = 2.077, p = .56)). The average weekly SIF was found to be significantly fewer during WFH (T = 5014, z = −5.598, p < .001). However, only 22.7% (n = 79) participants reported the use of contraception and 52.9% (n = 196) participants still wanted to have children. Change of menstrual pattern occurred in 31.6% (n = 110) participants and were significantly correlated to psychological distress (r_s= .126, p = .018).

Conclusions: WFH does not aggravate the effect of the pandemic on women's mental and reproductive health in Indonesia. A significant number of them still desire to have children and contraceptive prevalence is low.

Keywords:

• Quarantine
• COVID-19
• pandemic
• mental health
• reproductive health

Acknowledgments

We thank all participants who took the time to answer our online survey. We also sincerely thank our colleagues and acquaintances who helped distributed the online survey for this study.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflict of interest.