📈 economics

A Room of One's Own. Work from Home and the Gendered Allocation of Time

Using American Time Use Survey data, this paper finds that the expansion of Work from Home has significantly narrowed the gender gap in daily housework time—by approximately 41%—primarily because partnered parents working remotely have shifted toward a more equitable distribution where women increase paid work hours and men increase unpaid chore hours.

Original authors: Claudia Senik, Elena Stancanelli

Published 2026-07-14

📖 4 min read☕ Coffee break read

CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Claudia Senik, Elena Stancanelli

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

Imagine your home used to be a quiet living room where you relaxed, and your office was a separate building where you worked. For decades, society had a strict rulebook: men went to the "work building" to earn money, while women stayed in the "living room" to cook, clean, and care for the family. This was the old way of splitting the day.

But then, the pandemic happened, and the walls between the living room and the office suddenly vanished. Suddenly, everyone was working from home. This paper asks a big question: When the office moves into the living room, does the old rulebook get rewritten? Do men start doing more chores, and do women get to focus more on their careers?

The Big Discovery: A Shift in the Balance
The authors looked at data from thousands of American workers before the pandemic (2018–2019) and after it (2022–2023). They found that for people working from home, the gender gap in housework shrank significantly.

Think of it like a seesaw that was heavily tipped toward women doing the cleaning. For remote workers, that seesaw leveled out. Specifically, the gap in time spent on chores between men and women dropped by about 22 minutes per day. That's a 41% reduction in the gap!

Here is how the magic happened:

Women working from home started spending about 17 minutes less per day on chores (like laundry, cooking, and cleaning) compared to before. Instead, they spent about 56 minutes more on paid work. It's as if they reclaimed that time to build their careers.
Men working from home started spending about 7 to 9 minutes more per day on chores. It's a small step, but it's a step in the right direction.

Who is Driving the Change?
This new balance isn't happening for everyone. The paper suggests this shift is mostly driven by people who live with families—specifically those who are partnered and have children. If you are single and living alone, the paper finds no significant change in how time is split. It seems that when the whole family is under one roof, the "working from home" experience changes how partners share the load.

What the Paper Explicitly Rules Out
The authors are very careful not to jump to conclusions. They explicitly argue against a few ideas:

It's not just about multitasking: Some might think women are just doing chores while they work (like folding laundry while on a Zoom call). The paper suggests this isn't the main reason. Even though multitasking is possible, the data shows women are actually spending less time on chores and more time on paid work, not just squeezing both in.
It's not just a change in who works from home: You might wonder, "Did the type of people working from home just change? Maybe only the 'fair' couples started working from home after the pandemic?" The authors checked this. They found that the time habits of people who still work at the office didn't change at all. This suggests the change is happening because of the experience of working from home itself, not because a different group of people moved into the remote category.
It's not about childcare: Interestingly, the paper found that the time spent on childcare (feeding, dressing, playing with kids) did not change significantly in the same way. The big shift was specifically about household chores and paid work hours.

How Sure Are We?
The authors use a clever statistical method called a "triple differences-in-differences" model to compare these groups. They say their results suggest a strong correlation. They are careful to note that because they are looking at different groups of people at different times (rather than following the exact same people for years), they are documenting a change in average behavior, not proving a strict cause-and-effect.

However, the pattern is clear: For remote workers with families, the pandemic era seems to have nudged the household dynamic. Women are doing fewer chores and more paid work, while men are pitching in slightly more with the housework. The authors speculate that maybe, by being "put in the situation" of working from home, men are getting more interested in domestic tasks, or perhaps the commute time they used to spend is now being used to wash dishes.

The Bottom Line
The paper doesn't claim we have solved the gender gap or that the revolution is finished. But it does suggest that the widespread move to working from home might be the beginning of a "second gender revolution." It hints that when the home becomes a workplace for everyone, it might stop being seen as just a woman's domain and start becoming a place where both partners can work and share the load a little more equally.

Technical Summary: "A Room of One's Own. Work from Home and the Gendered Allocation of Time"

Problem Statement
The paper investigates the impact of the massive expansion of Work from Home (WfH) following the Covid-19 pandemic on the gendered allocation of time, specifically focusing on the division between paid work and unpaid household labor. While the traditional specialization of men in paid work and women in unpaid work has historically been rooted in the spatial separation of these activities, WfH dissolves this boundary. The authors ask whether this structural shift has altered the gender gap in time use. Specifically, they examine if WfH incentivizes men to increase domestic labor or if it creates a "triple burden" for women by relocating paid work to the domestic sphere, potentially increasing their total workload.

Methodology
The study utilizes cross-sectional data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) collected by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The analysis pools data from four years: pre-pandemic (2018, 2019) and post-pandemic (2022, 2023). The sample is restricted to respondents who worked for pay on their diary day (at least 45 minutes), resulting in a sample of approximately 6,261 men and 5,494 women.

The empirical strategy employs a triple differences-in-differences (DDD) model. The authors estimate the following specification:
$Y_{it} = \beta_0 + \beta_1 Male_{it} + \beta_2 PostCovid_{it} + \beta_3 WFH_{it} + \beta_4 (Male_{it} \times PostCovid_{it}) + \beta_5 (Male_{it} \times WFH_{it}) + \beta_6 (PostCovid_{it} \times WFH_{it}) + \beta_7 (Male_{it} \times PostCovid_{it} \times WFH_{it}) + X'_{it}\gamma + \varepsilon_{it}$

Where:

$Y_{it}$ represents time spent on specific activities (paid work, chores, childcare, etc.).
$WFH$ is a binary indicator for working from home versus on-site (WfO).
$PostCovid$ indicates the post-pandemic period (2022-2023).
$Male$ is a gender dummy.
$\beta_7$ is the coefficient of interest, capturing the differential evolution of the gender gap in time use between remote workers and on-site workers before and after the pandemic.

The model controls for a rich set of individual characteristics (age, race, education, marital status, children, income, occupation, etc.). The authors explicitly note that they do not claim causal identification due to the lack of longitudinal data and the non-exogenous nature of WfH adoption; rather, the study documents correlations. Robustness checks include event studies to rule out pre-trends, subsample analyses (by marital status, children, education), and restricting the sample to occupations with the highest "teleworkability" scores (based on Dingel & Neiman, 2020).

Key Results
The central finding is a significant reduction in the gender gap in time spent on household chores for remote workers in the post-pandemic era.

Reduction in the Gender Gap: For remote workers, the gender gap in chore time declined by approximately 22 minutes per day (a 41% reduction) in 2022-2023 compared to 2018-2019, relative to on-site workers.
Drivers of the Change:
- Women: Women working from home spent approximately 17 minutes less per day on chores in the post-pandemic period compared to the pre-pandemic period. Conversely, they increased their time spent on paid work by roughly 56 minutes per day.
- Men: Men working from home increased their time spent on chores by approximately 7 to 9 minutes per day relative to on-site workers.
- On-site Workers: The gender gap in time use for paid work and chores remained stable for workers on-site, indicating that the observed changes are specific to the WfH group.
Heterogeneity: The results are driven primarily by partnered respondents with children. For single individuals or those without children, the coefficients are small and statistically insignificant. The effect is also observed among college-educated individuals, though the magnitude is similar for those without degrees (though less significant).
Other Activities: The gender gap in childcare time did not show a statistically significant correlation with WfH in the main specification, though robustness checks without controls suggested a potential reduction. The gender gap in paid work time also appeared to decline, though the estimate was imprecise.

Contributions and Significance
The paper contributes to two strands of literature: the economics of remote work and the literature on the gender gap in paid and unpaid work time.

Post-Pandemic Evidence: While much existing literature focuses on the lockdown period, this study provides evidence on the structural changes in time allocation in the post-pandemic era (2022-2023).
Reversal of Traditional Patterns: The findings suggest that WfH is associated with a move toward a less gendered allocation of domestic time. Contrary to the "triple burden" hypothesis, women working from home reduced their unpaid labor while increasing paid labor. Simultaneously, men working from home increased their domestic contribution.
Mechanism Speculation: The authors speculate that the experience of WfH may have increased men's attention to domestic activities by "putting them in situation," potentially allowing them to reallocate time saved from commuting to housework. For women, WfH may have shifted the perception of the home from a purely familial sphere to a space where professional work is conducted.
Modest Claims: The authors explicitly state that their ambition is to document changes in average behavior rather than establish causality. They acknowledge limitations regarding the cross-sectional nature of the data and the inability to treat the allocation of workers to WfH as exogenous.

The paper concludes by questioning whether the expansion of WfH marks the beginning of a "second gender revolution," triggering a movement toward a more balanced choice of activities between men and women, though it stops short of predicting long-term outcomes.

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