*1.3. Homeworking and COVID-19 in the UK*

Compared to the rest of Europe, the UK generally has more workers working flexibly. For example, according to the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey, 30% of workers in the UK have access to flexible schedules (flexitime + working time autonomy), and 17% have worked from home on a regular basis (several times a month in the past 12 months). This is much higher compared to the EU 28 average of 25% and 12%, respectively, [17]. This may be owed to the fact that the UK introduced the right to request flexible working, including working from home, in 2003. Although this right was originally for parents of young and disabled children, it was extended to cover all workers by 2014.

However, despite the expansion of flexible working rights in the legislation, there has not been a large increase in the number of workers working from home in the UK over the past two decades [60]. One reason for this can be due to the prevalence of flexibility stigma in the UK. According to the 2018 Eurobarometer Survey, 29% of respondents in the UK said, "flexible working is badly perceived by colleagues", which was higher than the European average, 26% [17]. This prevalence of flexibility stigma is not surprising given the long-hours, ideal worker culture in the UK [61,62]. In such cultures, an 'ideal' or productive worker is considered to be someone who does not have any other responsibilities outside of work and prioritises work above all else [63,64]. Here, workers are expected to work long hours in the office to signal their motivation and commitment to the workplace, and are remunerated on that basis. Flexibility stigma is more prevalent in such cultures since flexible working, especially for care purposes, makes workers deviate away from this 'ideal' worker image [21,65].

The UK had one of the highest numbers of positive COVID-19 cases (10 million -based on 21 October 2021 data) and deaths (over 144 thousand) amongst the large, industrialised countries [66]. The UK government announced its first full-scale lockdown measure on 23 March 2020, requiring workers to work from home and the public was instructed to stay at home except for essential travel for food and medical issues. All non-essential retail shops and hospitality outlets (e.g., pubs, restaurants) were shut during this period. Although on 11 May 2020 the Prime Minister announced that those who cannot work from home (e.g., factory workers) can go into work, others were expected to work from home. Schools and other childcare facilities were closed from 20 March 2020, apart from childcare for key workers, such as those working in the health and social care sectors, retail and transport, and essential government workers. From 1 June 2020, schools were reopened but limited to three year groups: Reception, Year 1 and Year 6, and with limited capacity. Nurseries and other childcare facilities for preschool children were allowed to open from this time.

We expect several contextual factors to have changed the gendered outcomes of homeworking, especially changing the behaviours of fathers. First and foremost, working from home was a government enforced decision. During the first lockdown, employers had no other choice but to let workers work from home due to legal restrictions. Thus, although half of the total workforce was working from home during the first lockdown, in professional and managerial occupations, the number was close to two-thirds [1]. When

homeworking becomes more widespread, and more regulated as it was in this case, it is less likely to be stigmatised and more likely to result in better outcomes for workers' work–life balance [23,27,67]. This is because in such cases, homeworkers are less likely to be singled out, and workers are more likely to be themselves or in close contact with someone who works from home. What is more, many managers experienced positive (performance) outcomes during the lockdown. In fact, we saw a significant reduction in the flexibility stigma and increase in positive perception towards homeworking from both managers and workers during the pandemic [29,30,68].

Flexibility stigma may influence father's decision in using homeworking for care purposes more than that of mothers. As the main breadwinner, fathers are more likely to fear the negative career consequence coming from such stigmatised ideas [22,69–71]. Therefore, we can expect that the normalisation of homeworking and the decline in flexibility stigma may have especially enabled homeworking fathers to engage more in childcare and housework, compared to pre-pandemic times. This may especially be the case as formal childcare facilities were closed during the lockdown period resulting in a steep increase in both childcare and housework demands for parents. In these scenarios, fathers may have had no other choice but to engage in domestic work especially in dual-earner families. In fact, surveys show that during the pandemic, more parents, including fathers, have reported having discussions with managers around the increased care demands they were facing [30,72]. Working from home exclusively during the lockdown also meant that workers had more time available for them by cutting out commuting times. Due to the gender gap in commuting times, with fathers' commuting times much longer than that of mothers [73], it is likely that fathers saved more time by not having to commute. In sum, these changes may have enabled homeworking fathers to be more engaged in housework and childcare. However, as gender and work norms have not significantly altered during the pandemic, and as there were more childcare and housework to be carried out in general, we can also expect that parents' homeworking patterns may not have altered the division of domestic work significantly.

In sum, we come to the following hypotheses.

**Hypothesis 1 (H1):** Mothers are likely to carry out the bulk of the housework and childcare activities in heterosexual coupled relationships with children, both before and during the COVID-19 lockdown.

**Hypothesis 2 (H2):** In households where fathers were working from home during the COVID-19 lockdown, the division of housework and childcare is likely to be more equal/fathers are likely to do a larger share of housework and childcare compared to households where fathers were going into work.

**Hypothesis 3 (H3):** In households where fathers were working from home during the COVID-19 lockdown, they are likely to have increased the amount of time spent on housework and childcare compared to pre-pandemic times.
