Sometimes there aren’t enough hours in the day, but Manchester women seem to find the time to juggle their careers while taking on more housework than their partners – according to a new survey.
A staggering 77% of Manchester women do more than household chores than their male counterparts, including cooking, cleaning, ironing and washing.
Research shows that, despite greater equality in the workplace and changes to social attitudes, division of household chores are still heavily weighted against women.
However, the majority of members at the Manchester Women’s Institute have admitted that their partners do an equal share of jobs around the home.
Ruth Connor, Vice President of the Manchester Women’s Institute said: “We have a lot of member that are juggling busy work and home lives, that all say their other halves do an equal share around the house.
“A lot of relationships tend to share the work load equally, so I am bit surprised at what the survey has uncovered.
“Women doing more of the housework could be down to the fact that they tend to have more of an interest in household jobs and in some cases consider cleaning a hobby.”
Mrs Connor told MM that women tend to do more housework because they often spend more time in the home – often because of maternity leave.
“A reason why I think women still do the majority of housework is down to the Maternity leave laws,” said Mrs Connor.
“A lot of Scandinavian countries are well ahead of us in sharing the burden of childcare which often leads to males doing more housework.”
The research commissioned by Swinton showed that women still do at least two-thirds of the housework, even in homes where they are the main bread-winner.
Jayne Southworth, 42, a mum of two, from Sale, said: “I do the majority of the housework but my husband does contribute in some ways, I think women in general are more bothered about the cleanliness of the house compared to men, which is why they tend to do more.”
Image courtesy of ebbandflo_pomomamma , with thanks
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