To date, women in Germany take up the lion’s share of unpaid work in couples, putting them at higher risk of old-age poverty and financial dependency. Flexible work arrangements—such as remote work, flextime, or setting one’s own hours—have been hailed as ways to help couples balance paid employment and family duties. Advocates argue they could drive gender equity by enabling men and women to share housework and childcare more equally. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, access to such measures has expanded, raising hopes for a shift toward egalitarian partnerships. But do these policies truly reshape the division of unpaid labour?
Bettina Hünteler, Andrea Cass, and Martin Wetzel analysed data from 3,244 employed German couples in the 2018/2019 German Family Panel. The study compared how partners divided housework and childcare based on their use of three flexible work measures: home-office, flextime, and working-time autonomy. Their findings challenge assumptions about flexibility as a gender-equality tool.
The study found that women consistently contributed to a larger share of housework and childcare than their male partners, regardless of whether they used flexible work arrangements. For housework, no flexibility measure—remote work, flextime, or working-time autonomy—was linked to a more equitable division. For childcare, flextime displayed a deepened divide: mothers using flextime took on a larger share of childcare-related tasks than those without flexibility, while fathers took on less. This suggests potentially divergent motivations to use flexibility in the workplace in line with previous research: mothers may use flexibility to juggle caregiving and work, while fathers may prioritise paid labour and increase their productivity.
The authors’ research highlights that workplace policies may not be sufficient for achieving an equitable division of unpaid labour. In Germany—where the male-breadwinner/female-homemaker model is still dominant—flexible work alone risks reinforcing gender inequalities in unpaid work. To drive change, the authors stress the need for broader cultural shifts, such as redefining caregiving as a shared responsibility, and policy reforms, such as expanding public childcare provision. Otherwise, flexible work arrangements may continue to fall short of their potential to promote gender equality.
For more information on the data used in this research:
https://www.pairfam.de
https://www.freda-panel.de/FReDA/DE/Startseite.html