“The little bit of housework takes care of itself, says my husband,” crooned pop singer Johanna von Koczian ironically into the microphone in the 1970s. Housework was a woman’s domain – and what about today?
According to a study, working women do much more housework than men. According to a study by the Hans Böckler Foundation on the “Gender Care Gap”, working women invest an average of around 26 hours per week in unpaid work, which is around eight hours more than men who have a job.
Unpaid work mainly involves cleaning, cooking, shopping and childcare – i.e. activities for the household and family, summarized as care work.
The data comes from a special survey conducted by the Federal Statistical Office in 2022, in which around 20,000 German citizens aged 18 to 64 provided information on how they used their time – such a complex data collection only takes place every ten years. There is no comparative study by the Böckler Foundation on time use at the beginning of the last decade.
Many women only have part-time jobs
If you add up paid and unpaid work, the gender difference was only small in 2022: women work a total of around 54 hours per week and men 53. Women work significantly more often in part-time jobs than men, so they work fewer hours per week in paid employment on average (just over 28 hours versus just under 36 hours).
“The figures make it clear that women work more than men, but receive significantly less salary and social security because a large part of it consists of unpaid care work,” says Bettina Kohlrausch, scientific director at the Böckler Foundation’s Institute of Economic and Social Sciences (WSI).
In order to get more women into paid work, a double redistribution is necessary, the expert emphasizes: “Unpaid work must be distributed from women to men and paid work from men to women.” The Böckler experts urge support from politicians and companies.
Source: Stern
