Time Spent on Housework by Seoul Citizens: Women 2 Hours 26 Minutes > Men 41 Minutes

[경향신문]

Women living in Seoul spent two hours and 26 minutes a day doing housework, while men only spent 41 minutes on tasks at home. Even when both the wife and the husband worked, women spent more than three times the amount of time men spent on housework.

According to the 2020 Gender Awareness Statistics that the city of Seoul released on January 19, of the Seoul citizens aged fifteen and older, women spent a daily average of two hours and 26 minutes doing housework, while men only spent 41 minutes. Even in families where both the husband and the wife worked, women spent two hours and one minute on housework, while men only spent 38 minutes, showing that there was still a significant gap between the sexes.

The gender gap was apparent even when compared to figures from a decade ago. In 2009, participation in housework was 84.9% among women and 39.4% among men. The figures changed to 87.5% for women and 55.8% for men in 2019. The participation of men relatively made a bigger jump, but still only one in every two men did any housework. A survey of the hours engaged in housework among citizens who did any housework showed that women spent two hours and 47 minutes doing tasks at home, more than double the one hour and fourteen minutes invested by men. When asked, “What work do you want to reduce the most due to time constraints?” when we exclude paid labor (women 42.9%, men 61.6%), women answered housework (19.2%), transport (11.9%), and care labor (8.7%), while men said transport (13.0%), education (11.9%) and social activities for the purpose of socializing (6.0%).

There was more than a 5,000-won difference in the average hourly wage earned by women (15,037 won) and men (20,682 won). In the 2015 survey, women earned 12,059 won, while men earned 17,076 won. Another notable change in the latest survey is that the percentage of women significantly increased among workers who worked less than 36 hours a week. In 2015, women accounted for 21.2%, but in 2019, the proportion increased to 26.6%. The figure for men was 8.5% in 2015 and 9.9% in 2019.

Women also accounted for 8-9 out of ten people who received payments for furlough or reduced working hours due to childcare. According to an analysis of the employment insurance conducted by the Seoul metropolitan government, 80% of the people who received an allowance for childcare leave in 2019 were women. The percentage of men increased nearly four times to 20% from 5.4% in 2015, but women still accounted for four times that rate. As for those who received allowances for reduced working hours due to childcare, women accounted for 88.0%, while men 12.0%.