As of: March 1, 2024, 2:22 p.m
By: Marco Blanco Ucles
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On average, women spend almost 30 hours a week on unpaid work, while men only spend 21 hours.
This is what a study found.
The gap becomes smaller, the effort increases.
These are the core essence of the new time use surveys (ZVE) from the Federal Statistical Office.
These were presented on February 28, 2024.
One day before Equal Care Day, which takes place every four years on February 29th to draw attention to the fact that welfare work such as care and education is partly unpaid and socially invisible.
Back to the study, what is it all about?
The study looks at the amount of unpaid work that women and men spend per week.
This includes activities such as household chores, food preparation and caring for children and adult family members.
The gender care gap has fallen significantly in a ten-year comparison
On average, women do significantly more unpaid work each week than men - this includes caring for children.
© Cavan Images/IMAGO
The results for 2022 speak for themselves: the women affected do an average of 29.47 hours of unpaid work per week, while the men do 20.43 hours.
This results in a difference of 43.8 percent.
Clear numbers, without a doubt.
However, the gap between the genders is closing.
In the last comparable study by the Federal Statistical Office from 2012, the difference was 52.4 percent.
The gender care gap is not the only figure that speaks volumes - things don't look much better when it comes to the gender pay gap.
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Ruth Brand, President of the Federal Statistical Office, has a clear opinion on the results: “The gap between women and men in unpaid work has narrowed over time, but it is still considerable.
The time that women spend weekly on unpaid work has actually increased by almost 20 minutes in a ten-year comparison.
However, the time spent by men increased even more, namely by a good 1 hour and 20 minutes.”
Women spend the most time – 6.46 hours per week – preparing meals and doing household chores in the kitchen.
For men, however, shopping and handicraft activities are the most common - with 3.59 hours.
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Unpaid work |
Weekly time expenditure for women |
Weekly time expenditure men |
|---|---|---|
Cooking, housework in the kitchen |
6.46 hours |
3.40 hours |
Washing, household chores |
6.28 hours |
2.52 hours |
Shopping, household organization |
4.51 hours |
3.59 hours |
Gardening, animal care, crafts |
3.18 hours |
3.59 hours |
Care and support for family members. |
3.39 hours |
1.56 hours |
Volunteering and voluntary work. engagement |
1.56 hours |
1.54 hours |
Travel times for unpaid work |
2.49 hours |
2.23 hours |
Also interesting: one in four working mothers - 24.1 percent - assess the time available for gainful work as too limited.
On the other hand, one in four working fathers – 25.5 percent – stated that they spend too much time at work.
The Federal Statistical Office puts it simply: One in four working mothers would like to have more time for their job and career, while one in four working fathers would like to spend less time and instead devote themselves to other things.