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Using data from 15 countries, this article investigates whether descriptive and prescriptive gender norms concerning housework and child care (domestic work) changed after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results of a total of 8,343 participants ( M = 19.95, SD = 1.68) from two comparable student samples suggest that descriptive norms about unpaid domestic work have been affected by the pandemic, with individuals seeing mothers’ relative to fathers’ share of housework and child care as even larger. Moderation analyses revealed that the effect of the pandemic on descriptive norms about child care decreased with countries’ increasing levels of gender equality; countries with stronger gender inequality showed a larger difference between pre- and post-pandemic. This study documents a shift in descriptive norms and discusses implications for gender equality—emphasizing the importance of addressing the additional challenges that mothers face during health-related crises. 

This meta-analysis evaluated theoretical predictions from balanced identity theory (BIT) and evaluated the validity of zero points of Implicit Association Test (IAT) and self-report measures used to test these predictions. Twenty-one researchers contributed individual subject data from 36 experiments (total N = 12,773) that used both explicit and implicit measures of the social–cognitive constructs. The meta-analysis confirmed predictions of BIT’s balance–congruity principle and simultaneously validated interpretation of the IAT’s zero point as indicating absence of preference between two attitude objects. Statistical power afforded by the sample size enabled the first confirmations of balance–congruity predictions with self-report measures. Beyond these empirical results, the meta-analysis introduced a within-study statistical test of the balance–congruity principle, finding that it had greater efficiency than the previous best method. The meta-analysis’s full data set has been publicly archived to enable further studies of interrelations among attitudes, stereotypes, and identities. 

Despite global commitments and efforts, a gender‐based division of paid and unpaid work persists. To identify how psychological factors, national policies, and the broader sociocultural context contribute to this inequality, we assessed parental‐leave intentions in young adults (18–30 years old) planning to have children (N = 13,942; 8,880 identified as women; 5,062 identified as men) across 37 countries that varied in parental‐leave policies and societal gender equality. In all countries, women intended to take longer leave than men. National parental‐leave policies and women's political representation partially explained cross‐national variations in the gender gap. Gender gaps in leave intentions were paradoxically larger in countries with more gender‐egalitarian parental‐leave policies (i.e., longer leave available to both fathers and mothers). Interestingly, this cross‐national variation in the gender gap was driven by cross‐national variations in women's (rather than men's) leave intentions. Financially generous leave and gender‐egalitarian policies (linked to men's higher uptake in prior research) were not associated with leave intentions in men. Rather, men's leave intentions were related to their individual gender attitudes. Leave intentions were inversely related to career ambitions. The potential for existing policies to foster gender equality in paid and unpaid work is discussed.