WOMEN are doing more chores and parenting duties while working from home compared with men with similar responsibilities, studies on the effect of the lockdown on parents revealed yesterday.

Researchers from the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) and University College London’s institute of education asked 3,500 families about school closures, job losses, increased working from home and furloughing.

Between April 29 and May 15, they asked how individual parents of each family divide paid and unpaid responsibilities.

They found that mothers working from home were more likely than fathers to be spending work hours simultaneously caring for their children.

IFS research economist Lucy Kraftman said that mothers in households where the father does not work are doing an average of five hours of paid work daily on top of chores and childcare.

She said: “The vast increase in the amount of childcare that mothers are doing under lockdown, which many are juggling alongside paid work, is likely to put a strain on their wellbeing.”

In general, mothers spend an average of 10.3 hours a day on parenting duties — 2.3 hours more than fathers, according to the study — while also doing 1.7 more hours of housework.

Fathers have doubled the time they spend on housework and childcare compared with 2014-15.

Their increase in duties, even though less than women’s, “may serve as an impetus for a more equal sharing of childcare and housework” when lockdown ends, according to Sonya Krutikova, a deputy research director at the IFS.

Mothers in employment have seen a bigger proportional reduction in hours of paid work than their male partners, and are more likely to have left paid work altogether since February.

The work burden on women was reduced by 20 minutes a day to three hours and 32 minutes, but they are still giving an hour and seven minutes more of their time than men, a survey from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found.

Meanwhile, inequalities for young women have been made worse by the Covid-19 crisis, leaving many feeling underpaid, unemployed, overworked doing unpaid care, undervalued and worried about the future, a Young Women’s Trust survey has suggested.

The report, based on interviews with almost 200 women aged 18 to 30, found that half said they were financially affected by the crisis, with a fifth having already lost their job or future work.