Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought us many changes in our lives, which placed much more stress on us. Previous studies on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic from all over the world indicated gender gap, that is, women more than men were negatively influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, we focused on women and investigated the association among their stress level, gender-role attitudes, relationship quality, and experience of teleworking during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted an online survey. The participants were 547 Japanese women who lived with their spouse or partner during the COVID-19 pandemic. The average age was 40.03 (SD = 10.81) years old with the number of participants were equally distributed from 20s to 50s. The results of multiple regression analyses indicated that women who had egalitarian gender-role attitudes and/or higher quality of relationship with their spouse or partner had lower level of stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the change in relationship quality from before the pandemic and the experience of telework did not related to their stress level. Implications and limitations of this study were discussed.

1. Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives in many ways, some of which have added stress. The Japanese government initially declared a state of emergency in April, 2020 and has been advocating for its citizens to avoid the 3Cs (closed spaces, crowded places, and close-contact settings). The country’s residents have been strongly advised to stay at home, not to travel anywhere, and meet with as few people as possible. Under such circumstances, many individuals felt more stress in their everyday lives than before. In fact, the Cabinet Office Gender Equality Bureau in Japan ¹ reported an increase of domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Women experienced more stress due to increased time at home with their husband or partner and children not only in Japan ¹ but in other countries as well ^{2, 3}. According to a gender equality whitepaper by the Japanese government ⁴, during the period of the first declaration of a state of emergency in 2020, Japanese wives’ time spent on household chores and childcare increased much more than those of husbands. This phenomenon is not limited to Japan. For example, in the U.S., it was reported that although dual-career men and women who were working from home spent more time on housework and childcare during the COVID-19 pandemic than before the pandemic, women’s time spent increased 27% more than that of men ⁵. It is also found that the gender gap during COVID-19 was not only in time spent on housework and childcare but also in perceived work productivity and job satisfaction, in which women were less productive and less satisfied with their jobs compared to men ⁵.

Considering the aforementioned gender gaps, one of the factors of married women’s stress during the COVID-19 pandemic may be a more than equal share of domestic work. The perceived inequality might not have started during the COVID-19 pandemic, but as the previously mentioned gender gaps indicated, it became more apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, if women do not perceive unfairness/inequality, they would not feel much stress. Therefore, individual differences in women’s stress during the COVID-19 pandemic could be attributed to the individual’s gender-role attitudes. Although we could not find any previous study that indicated a direct association between gender-role attitudes and stress levels, we found studies that suggested an indirect association. Those studies revealed that men and women with egalitarian gender-role beliefs tend to share domestic responsibilities compared to those with traditional gender-role belief ^{6, 7}. From these findings, we expect that women with egalitarian gender-role attitudes would be less stressed during the pandemic because they do not experience an unequal share of domestic work. Thus, women’s gender-role attitudes may influence their stress level during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As indicated by an increase of domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic ¹, it seems that couples’ relationships may be affected by the pandemic. Therefore, another factor influencing women’s stress levels would be relationship quality with their spouse or partner. Results of an online survey in Austria during the COVID-19 lockdown showed that married persons with good marital relationship quality had better mental health in terms of anxiety, depression, perceived stress, and sleep quality than those with poor relationship quality ⁸. A similar association was found in Turkish married couples, that is, married couples’ satisfaction with their marriage and spousal support was negatively correlated with their perceived stress during the COVID-19 quarantine in Turkey ⁹. Further, it was found that in Belgium although both men and women felt more stress during the COVID-19 pandemic than before it, only women felt more stress due to relationship conflicts during the lockdown ².

The results from several different countries suggest that marital relationship quality seems to be an important factor influencing married women’s stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since couples spent longer time together at home during the pandemic than before, the impact of their relationship quality on their stress seems to be much stronger than ever before. Previous studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, however, are all cross-sectional and the association between a couple’s relationship quality and their stress levels was found even before the COVID-19 pandemic ^{10, 11, 12}. Therefore, it is unclear whether the impact of a couple’s relationship quality on their stress is stronger during the COVID-19 pandemic than before due to deterioration of the relationship quality during the COVID-19. In the present study we would like to clarify this issue by examining the association between changes in relationship quality and stress level,

During the COVID-19 pandemic some working women experienced telework for the first time, which may have led to stress for them. Telework has both advantages and disadvantages for the mental health of individual workers ^{13, 14}. However, previous studies suggested that in comparison to men, women were more sensitive to the costs of telework ¹⁴ and feel less effective and more dissatisfaction of teleworking ⁵. Therefore, telework could be a factor of stress for working women during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The present study investigated factors relating to the stress of Japanese women who lived with their spouse or partner during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since many studies all over the world indicated that more women than men feel stress during the COVID-19 pandemic ^{2, 3}, we focused on women. Based on the previous studies, we expect that women with egalitarian gender-role attitudes compared to those with traditional gender-role attitudes would have lower levels of stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also expect that negative changes in relationship quality from before the COVID-19 pandemic would associate with the high level of stress. Furthermore, we expect that women who experienced telework during the COVID-19 pandemic would have higher levels of stress than those who did not.

2. Method

At the end of September 2020, data was collected using a Japanese online survey company. In Japan, the COVID-19 pandemic became serious in February, 2020 and the first state of emergency was declared in April, which lasted to May, 2020. The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic commenced in the summer of 2020. Our data collection was conducted after the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, that is, at the end of September, 2020.

Women aged from 20- to 60-years-old who lived with their spouse or partner full-time from February to September, 2020 were screened from the company’s registered monitors as the first step. Then, the questionnaire we had made were distributed to them so as to collect approximately 500 data in total with equal distribution in four age-groups. We acquired responses from 547 women who resided in various areas in Japan. The numbers of each age-group were as follows: 138 women in their 20s, 136 in 30s, 136 in 40s, and 137 in their 50s.

The participants’ average age was 40.03 (SD = 10.81) years old. Four hundred and seventy-eight of women (87%) were married, 61% of them have at least one child, and 62.5% were from dual income households.

The plan of this study was approved by the ethic committee of the second author’s affiliated university.

Gender-role attitudes: A short-form of the Scale of Egalitarian Sex Role Attitudes (SESRA-S) ¹⁵ was used to assess women’s gender-role attitudes. This scale consists of 15 items and has good reliability and validity. An example of the items is “Important things in a couple’s life should be decided by a husband.” The participants responded on a scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree). The higher score means that an individual has more egalitarian gender-role attitudes. The Chronbach’s α of this scale was .89 in the present study.

Marital relationship quality: We employed the Excellence of Marital Relationship Scale (EMRS) ¹⁶ to measure women’s subjective evaluation of their relationship with their spouse or partner. The EMRS consists of 3 sub-scales; Love, Conflict, and Restraint. The sub-scale of Love consists of 12 items such as “We trust each other”; the sub-scale of Conflict consists of 7 items such as “I make sarcastic remarks to him”; the sub-scale of Restraint consists of 4 items such as “Even when I am unsatisfied, I cannot tell my spouse/partner.” The participants rated from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). A relationship quality score was made by adding the three sub-scale scores. This composite score indicates that the higher score, the better relationship.

We placed these 23 items at the beginning of the questionnaire and asked the participants to rate their relationship with their spouse or partner before the COVID-19 pandemic. The same 23 items were placed at the end of the questionnaire and the participants answered on the scale about present relationship with their spouse or partner. The change in relationship quality was calculated as the score of relationship before the pandemic minus the score of relationship during the pandemic. Therefore, the higher score means worsened relationship during the pandemic. The Chronbach’s α of these 23 items before the COVID-19 pandemic was .91 and that of at present was .93.

Stress level: Stress Response Scale (SRS-18) ¹⁷ was employed to assess women’s stress level. This scale was developed to assess psychological stress response and its reliability and validity were established. The SRS-18 consists of 3 sub-scales having 6 items each; Depression-Anxiety, Irritability-Anger, and Helplessness. The Chronbach’s α of the total 18 items in the present study was .96. The higher scores reflect the higher level of stress.

Other variables: Variables included in the analysis were women’s experience of telework during the pandemic (Yes/No) and the demographic variables such as age, working hours per week, number of children aged below 12, family type (nuclear family/extended family), and subjective economic status (financially struggling/not struggling).

3. Results

Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics of variables included in the analyses. Table 2 shows correlations between study variables. Gender-role attitudes had significant negative correlation with stress, which means that egalitarian gender-role attitudes were associated with low level of stress. On the other hand, neither experience of telework nor relationship change was correlated with stress.

To examine whether these correlations are still significant after controlling the demographic variables, we conducted a multiple regression analysis with the stress level as a dependent variable and demographic variables, gender-role attitudes, relationship change, and telework experience as independent variables (Model 1). Demographic variables included were women’s age, working hours per week, number of children aged under 12, family type (nuclear family or extended family), and subjective economic situation (struggling or not). There was no evidence of multicollinearity since VIF indicated from 1.01to 1.33. The results showed the regression model was statistically significant, R² = .22, Adj. R² = .21, F(8, 521) =18.50, p < .001. As shown in Table 3, gender-role attitudes significantly related to stress after controlling demographic variables (β=-.23, p <.001), but relationship change and the experience of telework did not. All demographic variables except hours worked per week was significantly related to the stress level.

Following the previous studies, scores of relationship quality during the COVID-19 pandemic instead of the scores of relationship change was entered as an independent variable with the same other independent variables, and we conducted another multiple regression analysis (Model 2). The result showed that this model was also significant, R² = .31, Adj. R² = .30, F(8, 521) =28.83, p < .001. Relationship quality during the COVID-19 pandemic was significantly related to stress as well as gender-role attitudes (see Table 4). In this model, the relationship quality (β= -.322, p < .001) was related to stress more strongly than gender-role attitudes (β= -.146, p < .001).

To investigate which aspect of relationship quality was related with stress level, another multiple regression analysis was conducted with independent variables switching from the score of relationship to three sub-scale scores (love, conflict, and restraint) with the same independent variables as in the first analysis (Model 3). There was no multicollinearity problem indicating all VIFs were under 2. The results indicated the regression model was statistically significant, R² = .36, Adj. R² = .35, F(10, 519) = 28.98, p < .001. Among three sub-scales, ‘conflict’ and ‘restraint’ were significantly related to stress level, whereas ‘love’ did not (see Table 5). ‘Conflict’ was more strongly related to stress level (β=.32, p <.001) than did ‘restraint’ (β=.12, p =.002).

4. Discussion and Conclusion

Considering the situation during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as women’s increase of domestic work, we expect women’s egalitarian gender-role attitudes and/or good relationship with their spouse or partner would associate with low level of stress, and experience of telework would be associate with a high stress level.

Consistent with our expectation, women who had egalitarian gender-role attitudes had lower levels of stress than those who had traditional gender-role attitudes. Our expectation was based on the previous studies showing that people who has egalitarian gender-role attitudes tend to share domestic chores and responsibilities compared to those with traditional gender-role attitudes ^{6, 7}, since we could not find any studies showing a direct association between gender-role attitudes and stress. The present study clearly indicated that direct link.

Regarding the relationship quality, although the change score in relationship quality was not related to women’s stress, the concurrent relationship quality during the COVID-19 pandemic significantly related to their stress level. As the Table 1 indicates, the change score is very small, which means almost no difference in relationship quality before and during the pandemic. Since the participants were asked to answer questions about relationship quality before the COVID-19 pandemic in the same questionnaire that asked about their present relationship quality, the correlation between those two scores was very high (r = .91, p < .001). This may be a limitation of using a retrospective way of measuring the change in relationship quality.

Consistent with previous studies in other countries ^{8, 9}, the present study showed the quality of relationship with a spouse or a partner was significantly related to Japanese women’s stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Negative aspects of the relationship (conflict and restraint), in particular, related with more stress among Japanese women.

On the other hand, experience of telework did not associate with women’s stress level. Since telework has both advantages and disadvantages for psychology of individual workers ^{13, 14} and we simply asked experience of telework, we could not detect the subtle effect of telework on women’s stress. In the future studies, we will have to collect more detailed information on individual’s telework situations.

Since this was an online survey, only women who can access computers participated in this study. Also, most of the participants (81.9%) answered that they were not financially struggling. Because the participants in this study were biased to be affluent women, we have to be careful to infer the results of this study. Despite of this limitation, it is meaningful that the present study indicated a direct association between egalitarian gender-role attitudes and lower stress level during COVID-19 among Japanese women.

Since women’s gender-role attitudes won’t change without the COVID-19 pandemic and the present study suggested almost no influence of the COVID-19 on couple’s relationship quality, the associations found in the present study would not be limited during the COVID-19 pandemic. It would be preferable to conduct the same study after the COVID-19 pandemic has come to an end.

References