*1.2. Homeworking and the Division of Housework and Childcare*

In this paper, of the various FWAs, we focus specifically on homeworking. Workers' control over when and where they work can shape the amount of domestic work they carry out [37,48] by providing workers more control over the physical or temporal boundaries between their work and home domains [19,49]. Working from home allows for the blending of work and home demands, where work and housework/childcare can be done at the same time [32,50]. Working from home can also help workers save commuting time, which can be spent on doing more domestic work and/or paid work [51]. Studies prior to the pandemic have shown that homeworking is associated with higher levels of engagement in domestic work for women, yet not for men [10,11,13]. Instead, men have been shown to increase their paid working (overtime) hours when working from home [12,14]. This can be partly explained through the border theory, which argues that the flexibility and permeability in the work-family boundary will result in the expansion of the sphere that the individual identifies with or expected to identify more with [19].

The UK has a rather traditional division of labour with women in heterosexual couples carrying out a larger bulk (68%) of housework and care, in comparison to other countries [52]. This is echoed in the social norms in the UK, where men are expected to be the breadwinner and women are expected to be largely responsible for housework and childcare [53]. This explains why mothers use and are expected to use homeworking arrangements to meet family demands, while such expectations do not exist for fathers [11]. Homeworking does not change the gender normative assumptions or the power dynamics around who should carry out domestic work. However, it can remove some work-related restrictions that might have prevented mothers from carrying out both paid and domestic work [11,54,55]. Similarly, gender norms may also prevent men from using homeworking arrangements to assume more childcare responsibilities and housework. Studies have shown that there is negative stigma surrounding homeworking which pressures workers to work harder and longer to compensate against such perceptions [25,56,57]. Although both women and men may feel the same level of pressure to work longer when working from home, women, especially mothers, may lack the capacity to extend their working hours further due to their commitments at home [16]. As men are still considered the main breadwinners of the family

in heterosexual relationships, they may feel more pressured to ensure to (over-)compensate for any negative stigma coming from homeworking to maintain the financial security of the household. Moreover, men's prior bargaining power within the household (as breadwinners) can explain why men tend to keep stricter boundaries between work and family or expand their work spheres when boundaries are blurred [11]. This results in men working longer paid working hours rather than engaging more in domestic work when working from home [12,13,15], although some scholars [55,58] refute this. In this sense, homeworking enables couples to enact a more contemporary form of traditional gender roles (see also, [59]), enabling mothers to work while maintaining their central roles in housework and childcare, and maintaining men's central roles as breadwinners [9,11,17,18]. However, the context during the COVID-19 lockdown may have altered this relationship, which is what we examine next.
