Women in Zurich do more unpaid work than men

The times when men brought the money home and women had to run the entire household are over. However, as a study by the canton shows, the people of Zurich are not yet living in a completely egalitarian way. It is still women who do significantly more unpaid work, while men are more involved in gainful employment. However, there have been shifts in recent years.

Men have reduced paid work and at the same time do more housework. However, they are still well behind women, who work around 10 hours more unpaid work per week. Conversely, men work a good 8 hours more per week for paid work.

The analysis of the canton is based on data from the Swiss labor force survey with a sample of around 4,000 residents of the canton of Zurich. The data was collected for the years 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2020. It also breaks down in great detail what kind of unpaid work women and men of working age do. On average, the women spent 22 hours a week doing housework, caring for the child for 5 hours and volunteering for 1.8 hours. For men it was 15 hours of housework, 3 hours of childcare and 1.4 hours of volunteer work.

The differences between the sexes are particularly large when it comes to cooking, cleaning and washing, where women do significantly more. Men are catching up, especially when it comes to cooking: in 2020, men spent almost 5 hours a week at the stove, in 2010 it was just a little over 3 hours. With a good 7 hours per week, women are clearly in the lead. On the other hand, there are hardly any differences when it comes to administrative and manual activities and when shopping.

Men have also caught up when it comes to childcare. It is still the case that women reduce their gainful employment more than men after the birth of a child. Compared to 2010, however, fathers of preschool children work 4.5 hours less per week. In return, they added a good 3 hours a week to childcare. However, at 18 hours per week, they are still 10 hours behind women. However, if the youngest child is already attending school, fathers and mothers spend a similar amount of time looking after the children.

Men and women spend similar amounts of time playing with their children, taking them for walks, or helping them with their homework. However, the women spend 12 hours a week taking care of the children’s physical needs, such as food or personal hygiene, twice as long as the fathers. Although mothers do more paid work today, they have not cut back on childcare, but rather reduced housework.

Unequal life chances

Since the data was also collected in the Corona year 2020, statements can also be made about the pandemic. However, the values ​​​​must be interpreted with caution, writes the canton in its analysis. It is not possible to say clearly which developments are due to the pandemic and which long-term trends.

However, it is clear that the people of Zurich spend more time cooking and baking, but less time doing laundry and shopping. This is likely to have had something to do with the more frequent work in the home office.

Overall, the canton comes to the conclusion in its analysis that Zurich “became a little more gender-regulated” in the period from 2010 to 2020. However, there are still significant gender differences.

Women spend more time in unpaid work and men more in paid work over their lifetime. This contributes to the fact that women earn less on average and, for example, have a higher risk of poverty than men in old age – due to lower contributions to old-age provision. “The distribution of paid and unpaid work not only contributes to differences in the everyday lives of many women and men, but also to the persistence of unequal life chances in the long term,” writes the canton.