14 DAY TRIAL // A new survey carried out in Spain showed that even if there are more women working today that thirty years ago, not much has changed when it comes to men taking part in household tasks.
In 1978 there were 20.7% of Spanish women working, and the percentage rose to 41.1% in 2002, according to the research conducted by co-author of the paper and researcher at the Public University of Navarra (Spain), Salomé Goñi.
In addition to that, 55% of women part of a dual earning couple still take care of all household tasks, while 33% of men do nothing at home.
Goñi explained to SINC that “younger women still carry out a larger amount of unpaid work than men, although in less proportion than older women.
“The same occurs with education – the lower the level of education, the more likely women are to have more household chores.”
For their research, the team of researchers gathered data from 2,877 Spanish working men and women, who stated they were members of a dual earning couple in the Survey of Quality of Life at Work in Spain, between 2001 and 2004.
The results of the study showed that only 12% of the women surveyed shared their household chores equally with their partner, a percentage far lower than the European average of 25%.
When not differentiating for gender, 18.91% of the participants stated they "do nothing" at home, 57% who say they "share the housework" and 23% "do everything".
When accounting for gender, things change a bit: only 0.64% of women say they do no housework at all, while 55% of them take on the entire workload of the household, unlike 1.4% of men.
Also, 33% of men in relationships with both members working, say they do not do "any housework".
The researcher explained that “if we take the sample as a whole, one might think the situation is balanced, but when we distinguish between men and women, the difference is clearly visible.”
The study also says that the more a man works outside of his home, the less likely is to help around the house and the more the women will take care of everything.
The less a woman contributes in terms of wage, the more likely she is to take on all of the unpaid work at home, and “the opposite occurs in the case of men, who would change from doing nothing to sharing,” concluded Goñi.
The results of this survey will be published this month, in the journal Sex Roles.