UNPAID WORK

THE IMPACT OF COVID - 19
ON CARING ROLES

ENGENDER

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION

2

WHO DOES WHAT IN THE HOUSEHOLD?

4

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO UNPAID WORK
DURING THE COVID -19 LOCKDOWN?

6

WHAT ARE THE IMMEDIATE RISKS FOR
WOMEN’S EQUALITY?

8

DATA

14

WHAT NEXT? THE ONGOING IMPACTS
OF COVID -19

16

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

18

1

 INTRODUCTION
The division of work between women and men is, and has long been, profoundly
gendered. Women’s access to paid work, leisure time and power remains heavily
constrained by traditional social roles as carers and mothers even as they have
increasingly entered and remained in the labour market.
The response to Covid-19 has seen a significant displacement of care and childcare
from services to households throughout lockdown. Despite descriptions of crashing
productivity in the ‘real economy,’ women are busier than ever. Time-use data, survey
data, and women’s own accounts all chart an increase in home-schooling, childcare, care
for disabled and older people, and other unpaid work predominantly done by women
such as housework and household management.
The only policy response to this increase in unpaid work has been an ill-fitting ‘furlough’
scheme, which initially did not include any provision for employers to secure wage
replacement for those doing caring roles.1 Although the UK Government’s Job Retention
Scheme has now been expanded to include furlough for those providing childcare or
care full-time,2 this is not available on a part-time basis. Women who are in paid work
are consequently juggling their employment and these larger care roles, with significant
consequences for their wellbeing and mental health.
The extent and pattern of women’s unpaid work is a key driver of their capacity to work
in the formal labour market, participate in public and community life, and be well and
healthy. It has implications for how women use public transport and other public
services. It affects the ways in which both finances and wellbeing are managed within
the household. Despite its centrality to discussions about women’s equality and rights,
unpaid care and reproductive labour is often marginal within policymaking processes.

Engender, Close the Gap (2020) Women, caring responsibilities, and furloughing during Covid-19.
UK Government (2020) Check which employees you can put on furlough to use the Coronavirus Job
Retention Scheme. GOVUK Available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-which-employees-youcan-put-on-furlough-to-use-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme [Accessed June 17, 2020].

1
2

2

 To avoid a rollback of women’s equality and rights as Scotland emerges from lockdown,
Scottish Government and other public bodies must consider the role of unpaid care as
they plan the ways in which economic recovery and the safe delivery of transport,
education, childcare, and other public services will be achieved.
This paper summarises the evidence on the gendered allocation of unpaid care for older
and disabled people as well as childcare, housework, and household management.
It describes how the Covid-19 lockdown has affected these patterns and analyses how
they must be taken into account in planning for economic and social recovery.

3

 WHO DOES WHAT IN THE HOUSEHOLD?
Patterns of unpaid care and domestic work were unequally distributed between women
and men long before the current Covid-19 crisis. The most recently available time-use
data for Scotland shows that women in opposite sex couples were undertaking
approximately 68% of the housework and 68% of the childcare.3 UK-wide research from
the National Centre for Social Research found that 25% women took part in childcare
on any given day, compared to 15% of men.4 This pattern of distribution is not specific
to Scotland nor the UK; women across the EU spend 13 hours more than men every
week on unpaid care and housework. The United Nations Development Programme
estimates that women do 2.5 times more care than men globally.5
These gendered patterns are long entrenched and have been stubbornly slow to
disrupt.6 The 2017 British Social Attitude Survey found that two thirds of respondents
thought that it was better for mothers to be at home or to work part time when children
were under school age and a majority also thought that fathers should work full time.7
In 2012 the survey found that 26% of respondents thought that most women would
prioritise their caring role over having a job, falling by just 10% since 1987.8 The
presumption that care is a product of inherently ‘female’ traits and preferences continues
to influence how we think care should be assigned, and what it is worth.9
The term ‘second shift’ was coined by Arlie Hochschild in the 1970s to describe the
phenomenon of women doing the majority of the housework and childcare after coming
Scottish Government (2019) Centre for Time Use Research Time Use Survey 2014-15: Results for
Scotland. Scottish Government. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/centre-time-useresearch-time-use-survey-2014-15-results-scotland/pages/5/
3

Wishart R, Dunatchik A, Speight S, Mayer M (2019) Changing patterns in parental time use in the
UK. NatCen. Available at: http://natcen.ac.uk/media/1722408/Parental_time_use_report.pdf
4

United Nations Development Programme (2020) The Economic Impacts of Covid-19 and Gender
Inequality Recommendations For Policymakers. Available at: https://www.undp.org/content/dam/
rblac/docs/UNDP-RBLAC-PNUD%20GENEROCOVID19ENGFINAL.pdf
5

Sullivan O (2006) Changing Gender Relations, Changing Families: Tracing the Pace of Change Over
Time. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

6

The National Centre for Social Research (2018) British Social Attitudes 35 – Gender.
The National Centre for Social Research (2013) British Social Attitudes 30 – Gender.
9
E. Thompson (2020) Gender and Inclusive Growth. Engender and Close the Gap.
7
8

4

 home from a day of paid work.10 Over thirty years later, feminists are still struggling to
make visible the persistent gender imbalance in who does the domestic and care work.11
Childcare has only relatively recently made it into the policymaking space as an
economic issue, rather than a social issue for families to manage within the household
or a children’s rights concern around early learning for young children.
As the novel coronavirus has disrupted childcare from extended family and nurseries,
schooling and social care, these gendered patterns have crystallised further. Researchers
from the London School of Economics (LSE) have highlighted the ways in which
lockdown has reversed a slow and “secular process of marketization of childcare and
home keeping” whereby more domestic and care work is mediated by the market and
carried out by cleaners and paid social care workers.12 (It should be noted that this
process of marketisation both advances women’s equality with men while
simultaneously undermining it as it is highly contingent on the low-paid and
undervalued work of minoritised and working class women.)13

Arlie Russell Hochschild (1989) The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home
H. Chung (2020) Return of the 1950s housewife? How to stop coronavirus lockdown reinforcing
sexist gender roles. The Conversation.
12
C. Hupkau and B. Petrongolo (2020) Work, care and gender during the Covid-19 Crisis.
13
See: Ehrenreich B, Hochschild A (2003) Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the
New Economy. London: Granta Books.; Close the Gap (2019) Still Not Visible: Research on Black
and minority ethnic women’s experiences of employment in Scotland.
10
11

5

 WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO UNPAID WORK
DURING THE COVID-19 LOCKDOWN?
Women’s unpaid care work has been compounded by public policy and service delivery
measures implemented in response to the pandemic. Work by Glasgow Disability
Alliance and Inclusion Scotland has found that social care packages have been reduced
and stopped.14 The ALLIANCE highlights instances where Health and Social Partnerships
have increased their eligibility criteria for social care, making it harder to access.15 This
undermines disabled women’s rights to dignified care and has also displaced care
responsibility onto female family members. As many as 39% of unpaid carers are
providing more care due to local services reducing or closing due to Covid-19.16
Survey data published for Carers Week 2020 suggests that there are now as many as
1.1 million unpaid carers in Scotland, of which 61% are women.17 This is an increase of
392,000 since the start of the crisis, with 78% of carers having to provide more care
than they were prior to the coronavirus outbreak.
While many households have seen both parents working from home, data are showing
that traditional gender divisions are even more pronounced when it comes to caring
for children.18 Research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that on average
parents are doing childcare for nine hours a day, with housework taking up three hours
of the day and paid work another three, partly due to increased unemployment and
furlough. However, mothers are doing paid work for two hours fewer a day than fathers,
and although both mothers and fathers are doing more housework than they were doing
pre-Covid, mothers are still doing considerably more housework than fathers.

Glasgow Disability Alliance (2020) GDA’s Covid-resilience engagement and response: Interim
report. Glasgow Disability Alliance.

14

The ALLIANCE (2020) Response to the Equalities and Human Rights Committee inquiry on the
impact of Covid-19 pandemic on equalities and human rights.
15

Carers UK (2020) Carers Week 2020 Research Report.
Ibid
18
C. Sullivan and S. Lewis (2002) Home-based Telework, Gender, and the Synchronization of Work and
Family: Perspectives of Teleworkers and their Co-residents. Gender Work and Organisation.
16

17

6

 MOTHERS’ AND FATHERS’ HOURS DURING LOCKDOWN
CHILDCARE

HOUSEWORK

PAID WORK
0

2

4

6

Mothers’ hours during lockdown

8

10

12

Fathers’ hours during lockdown

Previous data analysed by IFS showed that home-working mothers and fathers were
interrupted during the same proportion of their paid work hours but during the
Covid-19 lockdown mothers are interrupted over 50% more often than fathers. The
incompatibility of paid work and home-schooling or childcare has seen mothers
withdraw from paid work. Mothers in paid work previously averaged 73% of the hours
worked by fathers, but this has fallen to 68%.19
Understanding the distribution of reproductive labour within the home is key to
developing laws, policies and interventions which advance women’s equality with men.
We are concerned that a failure to understand the ways in which Covid-19 is entrenching
gendered patterns and adding to the demands on women’s capacity and time will have
long-running unintended consequences on women’s equality, rights and wellbeing.

A. Andrew et. al. (2020) How are mothers and fathers balancing work and family under lockdown?
IFS.
19

7

 WHAT ARE THE IMMEDIATE RISKS FOR
WOMEN’S EQUALITY?
Labour market
We are already seeing data that charts the impact of the significant increase in women’s
unpaid work. Pre-Covid women’s labour market participation was contingent on juggling
a number of factors, including the flexibility of paid work, the cost and availability of
childcare, the location of available work, the volume of unpaid care and household
management required by their household, and the availability of reliable and affordable
transport. Work by Close the Gap, Scotland's expert policy advocacy organisation working
on women's labour market participation, provides a comprehensive analysis of women’s
experience in the labour market, including that women are more likely to work in parttime roles at lower pay, are a higher and increasing proportion of workers on zero hours
contracts, and are more likely to be ‘second earner’ in opposite sex couples.20 All of these
features of women’s labour market participation are a product of gendered assumptions
about women’s roles and proclivities that are reinforced by the way in which our society
has organised work and domestic life.
The unequal distribution of domestic labour is a cause of unequal distribution of paid
labour.21 Women are more likely to report that they lack the opportunities to advance
their careers compared to equally skilled men22 and are four times more likely than men
to give up employment because of multiple caring responsibilities.23 Scottish time-use
data from pre-Covid shows that fathers spent on average more than double the amount
of time in paid work compared with mothers. This is because a significant proportion of
mothers were not in paid employment, and of those who were, many were working
part-time.24
See Close the Gap (2018) Women, work and poverty in Scotland: What you need to know.
T. Alon et. al (2020) The Impact of Covid-19 on Gender Equality.
22
CIPD (2020) Working Lives in Scotland.
23
Carers UK and Employers for Carers (2012) Sandwich Caring: Combining childcare with caring for
older or disabled relatives
24
Wishart R, Dunatchik A, Speight S, Mayer M (2019) Changing patterns in parental time use in the
UK. NatCen.
20
21

8

 Researchers examining real time survey evidence from the UK, US and Germany found
that since lockdown, regardless of whether they are also doing paid work, women at
home are spending six hours providing childcare and home schooling every working
day while fathers are providing around four.25 The studies also showed that the time
women spent time home schooling compared to men was correlated with the income
of the household. In higher-earning households, women were doing more homeschooling.26 The researchers also concluded that women’s greater propensity to be
providing childcare related to their being more likely to have lost their jobs during
lockdown. Women in both the US and UK were shown to be 5% more likely to lose their
jobs than men since Covid-19 and were less likely to be able to work from home.27
However, although a lack of childcare underpins women’s lesser access to the labour
market and lower earning power,28 earning disparity does not fully explain the
distribution of care in opposite sex headed households. The IFS study shows that the
gender gaps in time-use persisted irrespective of whether a woman was in or out of
paid work and even where mothers were the higher earner, they still did more childcare
and the same amount of housework as their male partner.29
With women’s patterns of paid work heavily concentrated in sectors most at risk of
economic contraction, women are more likely than men to lose their jobs in a recession
following the Covid-19 pandemic.30 The anecdotal evidence provided to Engender as
well as the statistical evidence referenced so far suggests that the increasing demands
within the home are acting as a an additional driver in women’s withdrawal from the
labour market. UK-wide charity Turn2Us estimates that women have experienced a 26%
loss of earnings compared with 18% for men.31 Mothers are already 1.5 times more
likely than fathers to have lost their jobs or to have quit their jobs over lockdown.32
A. Adams-Prassl, T. Boneva, M. Golin and C. Rauh, (2020) Inequality in the Impact of the Coronavirus
Shock: Evidence from Real Time Surveys.

25

Ibid.
41% compared to 46%. ibid.
28
Close the Gap (2020) Close the Gap briefing for Scottish Conservative Debate: Expansion of Funded
Childcare.
26
27

A. Andrew et. al. (2020) How are mothers and fathers balancing work and family under lockdown?
IFS.
29

C. Hupkau and B. Petrongolo (2020) Work, care and gender during the Covid-19 Crisis.
Turn2Us (2020) Coronavirus pandemic widens the gender gap.
32
A. Andrew et. al. (2020) How are mothers and fathers balancing work and family under lockdown?
IFS.
30
31

9

 There is a risk that as women lose or resign from their jobs that we will enter a negative
spiral in which gendered patterns of care entrench labour market inequalities that then
further entrench gendered patterns of care. The IFS data shows that mothers who have
stopped working for pay over lockdown are continuing to do twice as much care and
domestic work as their partners while when men stop working opposite-sex couples
are dividing the childcare equally while the mother does five hours of paid work a day
on top.33 As more women are forced out of the labour market directly or indirectly by
this pandemic, the greater risk to their future earning capacity and to women’s equality
in both the labour market and home. Lone parents, of which 91% are women, are likely
to face particularly stark challenges managing childcare with employment.34

Economy
The unequal impacts of care distribution pose wider problems for women’s equality
because of the ways in which economic and other policymaking is so separate from the
concerns of the household. The conversation around ‘reopening’ the economy has
surfaced the degree to which the wider economy relies on the paid and unpaid work
that is principally done by women but it has not been adequate integrated into decisionmaking. Reproductive labour35 is rarely (if ever) recorded in national accounting, despite
being worth an estimated £1.1 trillion, or around 56% of GDP, in imputed economic
value.36
The data showing us that women are undertaking the additional care and housework
within the home on top of their paid work illustrates the argument made by feminist
economists and many other heterodox economists that GDP is an insufficient measure
of productive activity.37 Data analysis carried out for Engender found that the loss of
two hours of earnings per day for mothers with dependent children38 amounts to a loss
Ibid
Close the Gap and Engender (2020) Women, Caring Responsibilities and Furloughing During Covid19
35
Reproductive labour (c.f. productive labour) is the unpaid activities in the home and workplace,
including childcare, meal preparation, cleaning and other activities, which are vital to the continued
functioning of a society. See K. Bahn, J. Cohen and Y. van der Meulen Rodgers (2020) A feminist
perspective on COVID-19 and the value of care work globally.
36
Office for National Statistics (2016) Women shoulder the responsibility of 'unpaid work.
37
N. Folbre, (2015) Valuing Non-Market Work UNDP Human Development Report Office.
38
A. Andrew et. al. (2020) How are mothers and fathers balancing work and family under lockdown?
IFS.
33
34

10

 of £33 per mother per day and if replicated across the UK, amounts to a loss of
£188,529,000 per day to the UK economy.39 The Scotland subsample of the Annual
Survey for Hours and Earnings is not large enough to allow for national analysis, but on
a population share basis (8%) we estimate that the impact of mothers’ lost earnings or
productivity would equate to £15,082,320 per day in Scotland. As lockdown extends
and women exhaust the annual leave and temporary flexibilities that enabled them to
maintain current levels of paid work, this figure will increase.

Public life and decision-making
Of all of the policy areas of interest to women’s equality advocates, we have the richest
data about the impact on Covid-19 on women’s labour market participation. However,
there are multiple other domains in which women’s equality will be undermined by the
increase in unpaid work over time. For example, women’s involvement in politics40 and
public life41 are both attenuated by care and domestic work. Additional hours of
housework and childcare are incompatible with the many unpaid hours political activists
and prospective candidates must work on behalf of their parties. They are also an uneasy
fit with serving as an elected member, particularly within council chambers, which are
low-paid roles with limited support.
The lack of current adequate representation of women in decision-making roles may
have serious impacts for women and women’s equality as the crisis and recovery extend.
It may also create negative feedback loops about the extent to which gender is an
important analytical lens in policymaking and service design. For example, women hold
only 30.4% of health service chief roles, despite 77% of the overall NHS Scotland
workforce being women.42 There is clear evidence from agencies working internationally
on disaster and crisis response that equality is only adequately considered when
marginalised groups are able to participate in emergency response planning.43 Women
39
UK figures taken from Table 12B of the main data reference tables from the ONS Families and
Labour Market October 2019 based on the Labour Force Survey. Available at
<https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetype
s/articles/familiesandthelabourmarketengland/2019>

Engender (2016) Equal voice, equal power: The case for gender quotas in Scotland.
Engender (2020) Sex & Power in Scotland 2020.
42
ibid
43
Hoffman, Sharona (2008) Preparing for disaster: Protecting the most vulnerable in emergencies
UC Davis Law Review 42:1491

40

41

11

 need to be round the table as decisions are made about the post-Covid economic and
social recovery, but unpaid care responsibilities remain a huge barrier to participation
in public life and politics. Women are less able to be involved in important decisions
about how gendered concerns should be integrated into short and medium run
planning while they are having to undertake increased levels of childcare and other
domestic work.

Women’s health
Globally, the increases in unpaid care and domestic work, loss of paid work and
increasing levels of gender-based violence have been observed in tandem with
worsening levels of stress and anxiety among women.44 Polling from Fawcett / Ipsos
Mori found that six in ten women are “finding it hard to stay positive”45 and data from
the ONS’s Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain series shows that 32.9%
of women reported high levels of anxiety compared with 27.4% of men. “Caring Behind
Closed Doors” also shows that 53% of unpaid carers felt overwhelmed managing their
caring responsibilities during the outbreak and are worried about experiencing burnout.
Mental health experiences differ between men and women; more women experience
anxiety disorders, and depression in women is significantly higher among those with
caring responsibilities.46 Both conditions are likely to be exacerbated by uncertainty,
fear and long periods of isolation. Additionally, women providing care in home and
clinical settings seem highly likely to be exposed to extended trauma, with
consequential depression and lower levels of wellbeing during and after the crisis.
Carers tell Engender consistently that they feel under intense pressure as a result of
the challenges of caring in conditions where they have limited practical support, an
inadequacy of information, a lack of clarity about how national and local processes are
supposed to work to ensure access to food and other necessities, and the loneliness of
having to shield to protect their loved ones.

UN Women (2020) Surveys show that COVID-19 has gendered effects in Asia and the Pacific. UN
Women Data Hub.

44

H. Siddique (2020) UK women bear emotional brunt of Covid-19 turmoil – poll. The Guardian.
The Mental Health Foundation ‘Women and Mental Health’. Available at
https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/w/women-andmental-health [Accessed June 10, 2020].
45

46

12

 Women’s isolation may not significantly ease during the earliest stages of emergence
from lockdown. Women’s reliance on public transport and comparatively lower levels
of access to private transport may make getting out the house difficult or impossible
for as long as the virus is in circulation. Rural women, who often have to consider broken
journeys and overnight stays to access ‘local’ health and other public services, are likely
to be even further disadvantaged. Suggestions that the public stagger journey times
away from peak commuting hours adds a further layer of complexity for women trying
to manage the potential for disrupted school and nursery times within journeys that
normally involve connecting multiple short trips, or trip-chaining.47

Department for Transport (2015) National Travel Survey: Trip Chaining: 2002-2014. Department for
Transport. Available at:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/5
09447/nts-trip-chaining.pdf [Accessed February 18, 2020].

47

13

 DATA
Good policymaking is driven by data and evidence. Scottish Government and its agencies
are currently failing to gather and analyse sufficient information on gendered patterns
within care and then bring these to bear on policymaking. A key gap is the lack of
reliable data that tells us how domestic and reproductive labour is actually being
distributed between opposite sex couples, both before and since the start of lockdown
in Scotland. The time-use data that provides the most accurate picture of household
task distribution is time-consuming, complex and expensive to collect. There are large
gaps between the time-use surveys that Scottish Government commissions and the
publication of its analysis. This means that we have had to rely on time-use data from
other sources in determining the impact of Covid-19 on patterns of care.
There is also a general lack of gender-sensitive sex-disaggregated data which could
provide an accurate picture of how men and women are experiencing life during the
pandemic. Gender-sensitive sex-disaggregated data is broken down by sex, so that it is
possible to compare and contrast differences between men and women. It is not just
counting women and men, though, and comprises statistics and other information
that adequately reflect gendered differences and inequalities in the situation of
women and men.
For example, data published in April by ONS showed that men and women were equally
likely to report increased childcare responsibilities once schools closed and the
lockdown began. Data showing that 73.9% of women and 66% of men with children in
the home are doing some home schooling now that their children are not in school
does not tell us about the type of education activities, the hours of schooling each
parent is providing, nor the extent to which those hours are balanced with paid work
outside or inside the home. The result is therefore inconsistent with other early data
and evidence which considers the gendered nature of care and reproductive labour and
tells us little of practical application.48

The Office for National Statistics (2020) Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain: 23
April 2020

48

14

 In the case of self-reported survey data, there is reason to be sceptical that perceptions
of distribution of reproductive labour match accurately with the time invested by each
partner. The New York Times found that nearly half of the US fathers surveyed reported
spending more time on childcare than their female partner, but just 3% of women
thought that their male partners spent more time on childcare than they did.49 While
there is some evidence that more childcare is being done by both men and women, the
types of work each is doing seems to also fall into gendered patterns. Research from
UN Women looking at Asian and Pacific states found that women were more likely to
be in charge of physical care of the children, as well as cleaning, cooking and serving
meals while men were more likely to provide teaching and administrative support.50

49
Claire Cain Miller (2020) Nearly Half of Men Say They Do Most of the Home Schooling. 3 Percent of
Women Agree, New York Times.
50
UN Women (2020) Surveys show that COVID-19 has gendered effects in Asia and the Pacific. UN
Women Data Hub.

15

 WHAT NEXT? THE ONGOING IMPACTS OF
COVID-19
The lockdown period has resulted in major disruption to the delicate balance of paid
work and reproductive labour that many women manage daily. This disruption is likely
to persist during the phased easing and long after the lockdown is eased in Scotland,
based on plans that are currently in the public domain. The return to work and school
is anticipated to be an incremental process,51 with increased care for children at home
and home schooling required on at least a contingency basis. Women who depend on
paid or familial childcare and/or social care alternatives to enable them to remain or
stay in paid work may not have full access to them. The Scottish Government has thus
far placed paid childminder provision before familial care in its staged journey out of
lockdown, which is likely to have a greater negative impact for women with lower
earnings.
Although plans now predict a faster return to school and childcare than initially
presented, this is of course dependent on an uncertain disease trajectory. A return to
blended learning or even another full lockdown cannot be definitely ruled out for the
foreseeable future.
The furlough scheme has provided a much needed but uneven safety net. It was
extended to cover parents and carers who cannot work due to care responsibilities,
although this was both belated and badly publicised. Furlough has been an inflexible
intervention, and in the medium-run we may need to seek alternatives such as part time,
flexible furlough that could offer women employment protection and reduce their levels
of stress and anxiety.52 It has now been announced that the furlough scheme is set to
wind down in the autumn of 2020, not long after children return to schools, which will
create a future crisis point for women unless the transmission of the virus has reduced
sufficiently to enable children to be at school full-time.
Scottish Government (2020) Coronavirus (COVID-19): framework for decision making - Scotland's
route map through and out of the crisis.

51

Close the Gap and Engender (2020) Women, Caring Responsibilities and Furloughing
During COVID-19.
52

16

 It is vital to consider how part time and shorter school days, delayed nursery opening,
and indefinite reductions in social care packages align with expectations around
restarting the economy. Where women are unable to work from home, it is difficult to
see how they will be able to balance commuting, workdays and short school days
without wrap around flexible childcare. Even where women can work from home, it is
impossible to do childcare and paid work at the same time. Staggered workdays have
the potential to conflict with women’s greater reliance on public transport, particularly
as transport providers have told customers that they may have to wait at stations or
bus stops for some time before there is space for them onboard to start their journeys.
Plans disseminated by local authorities and the Scottish Government have thus far failed
to take into account these complications thrown up by women’s disproportionately large
caring roles.53
At the start of lockdown, the Scottish Government took the decision to pause its work
to deliver 1140 hours of funded childcare from August 2020.54 Intelligence gathered by
Close the Gap from early learning and childcare providers suggests that this decision
has created significant uncertainty around short and medium-term funding in the sector.
Some local authorities have already withdrawn the 1140 hours delivery commitment
this year, while others have yet to announce whether they will progress as planned to
deliver the 1140 hours. This will have a severe impact on women and their families,
who have planned their paid work and unpaid work around the provision afforded by
the 1140 hours model. It will also cause significant financial pressure on providers,
particularly those which have already been delivering the 1140 hours and have based
future business planning on receiving the increased funding for the hours from August.
Reduced funding means that providers will either have to increase fees, which will make
the service unaffordable for many families, or reduce the service which both creates
accessibility challenges, and also risks the jobs of an overwhelmingly female workforce.
The change in policy also makes it less likely that employers in the sector will be able
to realise ambitions to deliver the Living Wage.
This crisis must see Scotland take meaningful steps to rebalance the gendered
distribution of care within the household. It must also factor its value to the state and
Scottish Government (2020) Initial Impact Assessment on the Strategic Framework for Reopening
Schools and Early Learning and Childcare Settings in Scotland.
54
Scottish Government (2020) Early Learning and Childcare expansion.
53

17

 to the economy into economic and social policymaking. There was previously some
evidence that the gender gap in paid work was narrowing, albeit slowly.55 We can also
see that fathers are now doing more childcare and domestic work than they were preCovid, but still far less than their female partners.56 In other contexts, fathers doing more
childcare as a result of specific interventions or circumstances has been shown to create
a virtuous cycle by which fathers continue to do more in the medium term.57 With
women and men working from home, the visibility of the care and domestic work that
needs to be done is heightened and employers may be sensitised to it as never before.
Finally, surveys show that 79% of the public in Scotland think the government should
increase support for carers.58 All of these create the context for work to evaluate and
revalue the way that childcare and social care is delivered in Scotland, and the support
that is provided to unpaid carers.
Considering the evidence around women’s unpaid work is the first step to designing
adequate childcare and care services during the recovery and beyond. There is also an
urgent need to change norms about how unpaid work is allocated within the household.
It is vital that Scottish Government and its delivery bodies commit to credible equality
impact assessments, as required by law,59 where data and analysis on unpaid work is
applied to policy development and opportunities to advance women’s equality are taken
as we step into the so-called “new normal.”
Engender and Close the Gap have produced ‘Gender & economic recovery,’ a paper
exploring foundational principles for a post-Covid economy. These demonstrate the
scale at which Scotland needs to shift its understanding of the economy to ensure that
economic growth includes women. Without this shift, the post-Covid recovery is very
likely to see a net loss of jobs and income from women to men, reversing the slow
narrowing of the gender pay gap that Close the Gap has charted in recent years.60

55
Wishart R, Dunatchik A, Speight S, Mayer M (2019) Changing patterns in parental time use in the UK.
NatCen.

UN Women (2020) Surveys show that COVID-19 has gendered effects in Asia and the Pacific. UN
Women Data Hub.

56

A. Patnaik (2019) Reserving time for Daddy: the consequences of fathers’ quotas.
Carers UK (2020) Carers Week 2020 Research Report.
59
EHRC Scotland (2016) Technical Guidance on the Public Sector Equality Duty: Scotland.
60
Close the Gap (2019) Close the Gap Working Paper 20: Gender pay gap statistics.
57

58

18

 CONCLUSION AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
Women’s unpaid reproductive labour has been ignored and marginalised
within our economic and social policy for generations, but Covid-19 has at
once made our reliance on care for others obvious and has intensified its
demands. Although the state depends on it, it largely fails to count it,
reward it and manage it, shifting the implied responsibility onto women
for its delivery because of highly gendered assumptions and expectations.
As a result, with public provision temporarily interrupted or withdrawn,
women who had until now managed to balance unpaid care and paid
work are coming to a crisis point. Unless we take this opportunity to
recount, reward and reallocate unpaid work, we will see women’s
progress in the labour market, in political representation, and in public
lives, roll back decades.

We make the following recommendations:

• Develop a mechanism for medium to long-term security for unpaid
carers for disabled people and older people in the form of a payment
equivalent to a least the real living wage. The payment should be
flexible and capable of being combined with paid work and education
or training while compensating for hours delivered.
• The Scottish and UK Government should work up options to ensure an
income for women unable to combine paid work and childcare for as
long as needed, and which minimises the risk of exclusion from the
labour market, possibly based on elements of the furlough scheme,
carers leave and/or shared parental leave.

19

 • The Scottish Government should commission time-use survey data
specific to Scotland to provide early data on how households are
managing unpaid work and other activities during the Covid-19 period
and recovery phases.
• The Scottish Government should ensure that data collection that is
pan-GB or pan-UK, including that gathered by ONS, has a sample size
sufficient to have sex-disaggregated Scotland-specific data.
• The Scottish Government, local authorities and other public bodies
involved in the reopening of education and childcare facilities must
commit to robust equality impact assessment before they confirm their
plans for reopening and contingency learning. Recent EQIAs have been
inadequate and without meaningful gender analysis, including of
evidence specific to women’s experience of care.
• The Scottish Government should carry out a gender-competent refresh
of the Mental Health Strategy in light of the impact of Covid-19,
including specific measures to address the mental health of those who
have delivered paid care work and unpaid care throughout the crisis.
• The Scottish Government should intensify its activity in response to the
National Advisory Council on Women and Girls’ recommendation to
create ‘Daddy Months’ of use-it-or-lose-it unpaid leave in Scotland. It
should also consider delivering attitude-change work to encourage
men to do their fair share of childcare and domestic work.

20

 Engender is Scotland’s feminist organisation. We work for women’s economic,
political, and social equality with men.
Engender is a Scottish charity (SC029053) and a company limited by guarantee
(SC 286639).

21

 Engender
10 Old Tolbooth Wynd
Edinburgh
EH8 8EQ,
+44 (0) 131 558 9596
info@engender.org.uk
www.engender.org.uk
Twitter: @EngenderScot
Facebook: /engender

Published July 2020