How is the time of women and men distributed in Europe? - Issue number 4/2006 - Products Statistics in Focus

It is well-known that women are more involved in domestic tasks than men, but remarkable differences can be observed between countries. Women aged 20 to 74 spend on average much more time than men on domestic work, ranging from less than 50% more in Sweden to over 200% more in Italy and Spain. The total hours worked - i.e. gainful work/study and domestic work - is generally much higher for women than for men, except in Sweden, the United Kingdom and Norway. Free time activities of women and men are dominated by watching TV and video, which accounts for between one third and one half of the total free time. This publication presents the main results of national Time Use Surveys (TUS) conducted between 1998 and 2004 in 16 EU Member States (BE, DK, DE, EE, ES, FR, IT, LV, LT, HU, NL, PL, SI, FI, SE, UK) plus Norway and Romania. It is a follow up to the Pocketbook on How Europeans spend their time (July 2004) which presented Time use data for 10 countries.