A new study from Melbourne Institute and Roy Morgan Research has found that men think they do more unpaid domestic labour than they actually do.
The study, which considered the responses of more than 1000 Australians, found that women do an average of 22.3 hours of unpaid domestic work every week compared to 15.3 hours for men.
For parents, woman’s unpaid domestic labour rises to 30.4 hours per week while a man’s goes up to 16.4 hours.
Grocery shopping, food preparation, laundry, grounds care and gardening, home and vehicle maintenance, caregiving (for children and adults) and paying bills were all considered as domestic labour within the study.
It might not come as a surprise that the research found that there’s not only a disparity in the amount of unpaid domestic labour being done by men and women but in our perceptions of how much is being done as well.
While sixty-two percent of women said that their male partners did less hours of unpaid labour than they did, only 57 percent of men believed their female partner did more.
The same disparity was seen for parents, where around 70 per cent of mothers reported doing more than the father of their children, and only 56 per cent of fathers believing their partner contributed more.
Considering these statistics, it’s no surprise that women were found to be more dissatisfied that men with the division of household labour. The study found that nearly 30 per cent of women were either very or moderately dissatisfied.
It might come as no surprise to mothers that the most satisfied demographic were actually the fathers, with 60% feeling very or moderately satisfied with division of chores.
While we know that women—whether in full-time employment or not—do more unpaid domestic labour than men, this study reveals a deeper problem with the way male partners are thinking about the devision of household chores.
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