Housework continues to be a predominantly female task in Europe / Romania is no exception

A study carried out by researchers from the Institute of Demographic Studies in Barcelona on a sample of 74,630 people, representing couples with children under 18, from 15 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Great Britain) and which was published in March 2024, showed that women in all these countries spend more time on housework than men , according to Kathimerini, quoted by Rador Radio Romania.

Italy, Greece and Romania are the countries where everything related to the home and children is a “strictly women’s job”. In Greece, even “career” women, who bring home much more money than their husbands, end up cooking and washing dishes at the end of the day.

Why so? “For the sake of peace in the family,” the women answer. “Because I don’t know what to do,” the men reply.

As the data of the study shows, a mother in Greece spends an average of 4.7 hours a day cooking, cleaning, washing, walking the dog, but also to arrange the schedule of family members as if she were a permanent secretary of the house.

In contrast, a father will spend on average only 1/5 of the time allocated by the mother, which is almost an hour (59 minutes to be exact) per day on household chores. The same situation is recorded in Italy and Romania.

The unequal distribution of household chores is also valid for Nordic countries such as Finland and Norway, but there the difference is slightly smaller.

In Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Spain and France, women spend around 3.6 hours a day more than men on housework. But in these countries, the figures show that men also participate in household activities, allocating even 2 hours a day for them.

In Norway and Finland women spend about 3 hours a day washing, cooking and cleaning, but men also take care of the house at least 2 hours a day.

In addition, it is worth noting that in these two countries, women and men seem to have approximately equal weight in the matter of “managing” the household, that is, in establishing a schedule for the smooth functioning of the family.