Women spend an hour longer a day doing housework than men - with Yorkshiremen the worst for time on chores
8 May 2024, 11:34 | Updated: 8 May 2024, 11:39
Women spend almost an hour a day longer than men doing housework, new data has shown.
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Yorkshiremen are the worst culprits, shirking the most responsibility for housework, data from The Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed.
The study examined how UK adults spend their time and the activities carried out each day, from paid work, personal care, childcare, and hobbies.
Women do around three and a half hours of housework each day, the data shows, compared to men who spend an average of two hours and 35 minutes.
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Men in Yorkshire and the Humber had the greatest disparity to female counterparts, putting in an hour and 21 minutes less on housework.
Men in the West Midlands, on the other hand, spent the most time on housework, putting in three hours and nine minutes - 22 minutes less than women.
The greatest disparity was found among families with children under the age of 18. Fathers spent an average of one hour and 43 minutes on unpaid work while mothers contributed two hours and 46 minutes.
Stay-at-home mothers also put in an average of 50 minutes of extra unpaid work a day.
The ONS data also found how else Britons spent their day - including hobbies and going out.
Britons spend almost five times as much time watching television as socialising, according to the study.
An average of two hours and 20 minutes is spent watching TV, while socialising time takes up 31 minutes.
Other activities included food preparation and eating, which took up one hour and 55 minutes. Washing, dressing and grooming took 55 minutes on average and cleaning around 27 minutes.
The study also discovered that the way people spend their day has significantly changed since the pandemic.
The greatest change was that socialising time unsurprisingly increased, increasing threefold since April 2020 when it was eight minutes.
Television time has also decreased, falling from three hours to two hours and 20 minutes.
ONS spokesperson Ellys Monahan said of the data: “Today’s findings shed light on the large amount of unpaid work adults in the UK do. Things like unpaid childcare, cleaning, and cooking adds a lot of value to the country but is not counted by standard economic measures such as GDP.
"These data will help us better understand this contribution.”
