study
Women work significantly more unpaid than men
A mother participates in a video conference while folding laundry in the child’s room. photo
© Annette Riedl/dpa
Women spend significantly more time in unpaid work. According to the results of a study by the Federal Statistical Office, little has changed in the traditional distribution of roles.
Employment, childcare, shopping and household: On average, women in Germany spend many hours doing this every day – significantly more than men, as a study shows. Men therefore not only do significantly less unpaid work, they also work slightly less overall. According to a study by the Federal Statistical Office, the so-called “gender care gap” is around 44 percent. Accordingly, women spend significantly more time on unpaid work than men.
Women work significantly more unpaid than men
“This means that women do an average of one hour and seventeen minutes more unpaid work per day than men,” said the President of the Federal Statistical Office, Ruth Brand, in Berlin. Unpaid work refers, for example, to household management, childcare, caring for relatives and social engagement as well as supporting people outside the household. The basis is a study from 2022 that examines how people divide their time. The study was last carried out in 2012/2013. At that time, the “gender care gap” was still around 52 percent.
According to the current study, women spend an average of almost 45.5 hours per week working, of which almost 30 hours are unpaid. The situation is different for men: they spend almost 21 hours, less than half of their 44-hour week on unpaid work. This means that overall they work less than women. “In 2022, women worked around 1.5 hours more than men. In 2012/2013 the difference was only around 1 hour,” explained Brand.
Almost half of women’s unpaid work consists of traditional housework such as cooking, cleaning and washing laundry – in a week women spend more than 13 hours doing this, men only spend half as much.
Women spend twice as much time on child care
According to reports, women spend almost five hours a week on household organization and shopping, while men spend around four. Both genders spend about the same amount of time on other unpaid activities such as gardening, manual work or social engagement. Things are different when it comes to child care – according to the results, mothers invest on average almost twice as much time as fathers.
Mothers would like to be more involved in paid work: one in four working mothers said that they would like to have more time for their work. In contrast, one in four fathers would prefer to spend less time working and instead focus on other things.
Parents do more work than those without parents
According to the study, the amount of work adults do depends on whether they live in a household with or without children. Parents, both single parents and couples with children, work an average of 57 hours per week. This means that parents do around 11 hours more work than adults without children. The difference is particularly large among men: fathers work an average of 12 hours more per week than men without children.
Overall, mothers of small children do less paid work than women without children in the household. “Instead, childcare and household management are primarily taken on by mothers, especially in the first years of children’s lives, while fathers tend to take on the traditional role of the main earner,” said the Federal Statistical Office.
Family Minister Paus criticizes unequal distribution
Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens) criticized the unequal distribution of care work: “For women this usually means: a lower salary, fewer professional opportunities and precarious pension provision.” It is important that women stand on their own feet economically. But this can only be achieved if women and men take on unpaid care work together. “We are therefore continuing to invest in the expansion and quality of child day care,” said Paus.
The United Nations women’s rights organization called for care work to be upgraded. “Professional care work must finally be financially valued and unpaid care work must be socially recognized and distributed fairly,” said the chairwoman of UN Women Germany, Elke Ferner. The Future Family Forum also called for better framework conditions from the federal government to make it easier for women and men to share care and paid work more fairly, and more support for care.
Loneliness is a topic in the survey for the first time
For the first time, the topic of loneliness was also addressed in the survey. According to the study, one in six people in Germany feels lonely, almost 12 million people. Young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are most affected – one in four people feel lonely. Women also tend to feel lonelier than men.
The Federal Statistical Office records how people in Germany spend their time every ten years. In the 2022 survey, around 10,000 households with 20,000 people aged 10 and over were asked on a voluntary basis on three specified days (including two weekdays and one day on the weekend) to record their time spent in 10-minute increments in a time diary or in a time diary Capture the app.