*3.1. Descriptive*

As Figure 1 shows, 50% of the fathers in our survey worked from home (almost) exclusively during the lockdown, while only 27% worked from home regularly (once a week or more) before. Only 24% of mothers worked from home regularly before the lockdown, but this number almost tripled to 62% during the lockdown. These proportions are slightly higher than official statistics (e.g., [1]), where it was noted approximately half of all workers were working from home during the pandemic. This again indicates our survey may be skewed slightly towards higher-skilled office workers who were more likely to have worked from home both before and during the pandemic.

**Figure 1.** Men and Women working from home before and during the COVID-19 lockdown in percentages. WHF frequently refers to working from home at least once a week; WFH (almost) exclusively refers to working from home at least 3 days a week.

As we can see in Figure 2, mothers generally carried out more and often all of the domestic work examined in our survey both before and during the lockdown. The exception to this is DIY (here including household repair and gardening), which is considered a more masculine or gender-neutral task [34]. In all six categories, we see a general decline in the proportion of respondents who responded that the female partner was mainly carrying out the tasks. For example, while 70% of respondents said that mothers did more/all of the cooking before the lockdown, 62% said this was the case during the lockdown. Similarly, 74% said mothers were doing more/all of the cleaning and laundry before the lockdown, while only 64% of respondents said this was the case during the lockdown. Just over half of respondents said that mothers were doing more/all of the routine (generally looking after children) and non-routine (playing entertaining) childcare during the lockdown (56% and 54% respectively), a reduction from 64% and 58% before the lockdown respectively. This change is not as clear in the case of education/home-schooling. 62% of respondents said mothers were largely responsible for home-schooling/educating children during the lockdown, a similar rate to 63% before the lockdown. The data revealed a slight increase in the number of respondents who said that women are solely responsible for home-schooling during the lockdown (22% compared to 17% before the lockdown). This mirrors results from larger-scale studies in the UK which shows that home-schooling during the lockdown was largely considered a mother's responsibility [42].

**Figure 2.** The division of housework and childcare among couples before and during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The amount of housework and childcare parents carried out increased significantly during the lockdown. Thus, despite many respondents feeling that housework and childcare were shared more equally during the lockdown, this does not mean that women did less than before. As Figure 3 shows, a large proportion of mothers report spending 'more' or 'much more' time on housework and childcare during the lockdown compared to before. This was especially the case for childcare, namely, routine childcare and homeschooling/education activities, as more than 2/3 of the women in our survey report having spent (much) more time on these tasks during the lockdown. However, we also see a considerable number of fathers who report spending more time on housework and childcare during the lockdown. This was especially true for childcare, where more than 60% of the fathers in our survey responded that they do more or much more routine, non-routine childcare and home-schooling/educational activities than they did before the lockdown.

**Figure 3.** The proportion or participants noting that they do more or much more housework and childcare during the COVID-19 lockdown compared to before by gender.
