Cause for Concern: Gender Inequality in Experiencing the COVID-19 Lockdown in Germany

COVID-19 is having a tremendous impact on gender relations, as care needs have been magnified due to schools and day-care closures. Using topic modeling on over 1,100 open reports from a survey fielded during the first four weeks of the lockdown in Germany, we shed light on how personal experiences of the lockdown differ between women and men. Our results show that, in general, people were most concerned about social contacts and childcare. However, we find clear differences among genders: women worried more about childcare while men were more concerned about paid work and the economy. We argue that the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting women more heavily than men not only at the physical level of work (e.g. women are reducing more paid work hours than men), but also through increasing the division regarding the cognitive level of work (e.g. women are more worried about childcare work while men are about paid work). These developments can potentially contribute to a future widening of the gender wage gap during the recovery process.

COVID-19疫情对性别关系产生了巨大的影响，由于学校和日托中心的关闭，护理需求得到了放大。通过对德国封锁初期四周内进行的超过1100份调查报告进行主题建模，我们揭示了男女在封锁期间的个人经历存在明显差异。我们的研究结果表明，总体而言，人们最为关注的是社交联系和育儿问题。然而，我们发现性别之间存在着明显的差异：女性对育儿问题更为担忧，而男性则更关注有偿工作和经济状况。我们认为，COVID-19疫情不仅对女性在物理劳动层面（例如，女性减少的有偿工作时间多于男性）的影响大于男性，而且通过加剧认知层面工作（例如，女性更担忧育儿工作，而男性则关注有偿工作）的分化，这也可能在未来恢复过程中导致性别工资差距的进一步扩大。