Títol.- Greater gender inequality or egalitarianism? Trends in United States mothers’ and fathers’ unpaid labour time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract.-Mothers experienced a disproportionate increase in time in unpaid labour during the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, many scholars argued that the pandemic precipitated a shift toward more traditional gender roles and a widening of gender inequality. During this seminar I will present work on how American mothers’ and fathers’ time in unpaid labour shifted in the immediate and later stages of the pandemic. Using data from three waves of the American Time Use Survey (2019-2021), we test the thesis that the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the division of household labour into more traditional gender roles examining several measures of unpaid labour. Moreover, we examine the contribution of changes in parental work, such as labour force dropout and shifts into working from home, in explaining unequal changes in parenting time and housework.