Ftough people in Germany spend significantly more time on unpaid work than men. The Federal Statistics Office reported on Wednesday that in 2022, they worked an average of nearly 30 hours a week, about nine hours more unpaid work than men.
Almost half of this women's work consists of classic household tasks such as cooking, cleaning and laundry. In summary, unpaid work consists of so-called care work in the household, childcare and caring for loved ones, as well as voluntary and voluntary work and supporting people outside the household.
The data comes from the so-called Time Use Survey 2022. In this survey, every ten years, representatively selected households provide detailed information on how much time they spend on different areas of life. This time there were about 10,000 households with 20,000 people ten years and older.
Overall time spent on unpaid work has increased
According to this, women did unpaid work an hour and 17 minutes longer per day than men. Percentage wise, women do 43.8 percent more unpaid work than men. In the previous 2012/2013 survey, it was 52.4 percent.
“The gap between women and men in unpaid work has narrowed over time but is still significant,” said Ruth Brand, president of the Statistics Office. Women's weekly time spent on unpaid work has increased by nearly 20 minutes in ten years. “However, the time spent by men increased even more, namely by a good hour and 20 minutes,” said Brand.
Combining paid and unpaid work, adults work an average of 44.5 hours per week, of which 19 hours are paid and 25.5 hours are unpaid. Unpaid work for women over the age of 18 is on average two thirds of their total work, while for men it is less than half at 21 hours.
Parents work eleven hours more than adults without children
If you look at parents alone and their time allocation, they work a total of eleven hours more per week than adults without children. Mothers continue to take on the majority of caregiving, especially for young children, and work an average of just 13 hours a week until the child is six.
As the survey shows, every fourth working mother feels that their time for paid work is too limited. One in four fathers think they spend too much time at work. In addition, one in six people in Germany often feel lonely – this particularly affects young adults, single parents and people living alone.