Women spent more time on housework at every age
Time-use diaries from ten industrialized countries. In Italy, women spent 226 minutes a day and men 50; in Finland, the figures were 163 and 110.
The key idea
The gap appeared in all ten countries, but its size depended on which country you looked at.
The study, in plain language
The authors combined 201,972 24-hour diaries from ten countries, collected between 2005 and 2015. Each person described one day, and data were adjusted to represent each country’s population and all days of the week. They compared domestic work by men and women across five age groups. In Italy, men spent 50 minutes a day and women 226. In Finland, the figures were 110 and 163, according to a table the authors corrected in 2024.
In every age group, women recorded more domestic work, and care time peaked among people aged 30 to 44. The general pattern remained after accounting for employment, education, who people lived with, and whether they had children, although the size of the gap varied by country and activity. There are limits: each diary came from a different person, so no one was followed as they aged, and the figures do not explain why tasks were divided this way.
What they found
- Women spent more time on domestic work in every age group studied.
- The size of the difference varied by country and activity.
- The pattern remained after accounting for employment, education, and family situation.
How they studied it
Researchers combined one-day diaries from people in ten industrialized countries, collected between 2005 and 2015. They compared time spent on each activity by men and women across five age groups, then repeated the comparison accounting for employment, education, living arrangements, and children. No intervention took place; the data record what each person reported doing that day.
What the study cannot show
- The data are cross-sectional and do not follow the same people as they age. They do not describe the present or identify causal effects of norms or policies. Table 1 was consulted using the authors’ official 2024 correction.
Something to think about
When discussing how tasks are divided at home, do you count how many each person does or how much time each person spends? These are country averages, not a portrait of one household.
The original study
Gender differences in time use across age groups: A study of ten industrialized countries, 2005–2015
Source under CC BY 4.0. English adaptation and explanation by PaperFlow, with AI assistance. The text has been reorganized for a general audience; it is not the complete paper and does not imply endorsement by its authors.
One study alone does not represent a field's consensus. Educational content does not replace professional advice. Report a possible error.
