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Household chores: Mom does it

Photo: Ekaterina Yakunina / Westend61 / IMAGO

Women in Germany spend significantly more time on unpaid work than men.

In 2022, they worked an average of almost 30 hours per week, around nine hours more unpaid work than men.

This is reported by the Federal Statistical Office.

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Almost half of this work by women consists of classic housework such as cooking, cleaning and washing laundry.

Overall, unpaid work consists of so-called care work in the household, childcare and caring for relatives, but also voluntary and voluntary work and supporting people outside the household.

The data comes from the so-called Time Use Survey 2022.

In this survey, representatively selected households provide detailed information every ten years about how much time they spend on different areas of life.

This time there were around 10,000 households with 20,000 people aged ten and over.

According to this, women did unpaid work for an average of one hour and 17 minutes per day longer than men.

The so-called gender care gap was 43.8 percent.

This figure shows the different amount of time that women and men aged 18 and over spend on unpaid work on average.

Women also work more overall than men

In the previous survey in 2012/2013, the gender care gap was 52.4 percent.

“The gap between women and men in unpaid work has narrowed over time, but it is still considerable,” said Statistics Office President Ruth Brand.

The weekly time spent on unpaid work for women has increased by almost 20 minutes within ten years.

“However, the time required for the men increased even more, namely by a good hour and 20 minutes,” said Brand.

However, if you add up paid and unpaid work, the gender imbalance has continued to grow.

Women reported working an average of almost 45.5 hours per week in 2022, compared to almost 44 hours for men.

The difference was only about an hour in 2012/13 and has now grown to an hour and a half.

As the survey also shows, one in four working mothers feels that their time for paid work is too limited.

One in four fathers thinks they spend too much time at work.

Furthermore, one in six people in Germany often feels lonely - young adults, single parents and those living alone are particularly affected.

mamk/Reuters