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Women doing an hour more childcare and housework per day than men under lockdown, ONS study shows

Shutterstock / Budimir Jevtic
Shutterstock / Budimir Jevtic

Men are still doing more than an hour less housework and childcare than women every day, despite taking on more domestic responsibilities over the past two months of lockdown, a major new survey has found.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) study showed that overall British men have increased their unpaid labour - essential tasks including caring for children or adults, and housework - by just 22 minutes to two hours and 25 minutes a day.

And, although average time spent by British women on unpaid labour has fallen by 20 minutes each day during the lockdown, they are still giving an hour and seven minutes more of their time to menial tasks than men.

The average woman is now spending three hours and 32 minutes on unpaid labour daily.

The ONS data came from its Time Use survey taking into account dates between March 28 and April 26, 2020.

The survey concluded that time spent by parents on childcare - including activities like feeding, washing, and helping with homework - has risen by more than a third (35 per cent) during the lockdown, as care from older people such as grandparents plummeted by 90 per cent due to lockdown restrictions on seeing elderly relatives.

This equated to 1 hour 45 minutes in grandparent caring time lost per week.

The study also found that, because low-paid jobs are less likely to be able to be completed from home, those on low household incomes have been spending more time doing paid work since the lockdown began.

Those with monthly household incomes up to £1,700 have spent an extra 21 minutes a day on average doing paid work, compared with a drop of about 32 minutes for those on monthly incomes of £1,700 to £3,300.

Gueorguie Vassilev of the ONS said: “These new findings show that not all households are experiencing the impacts of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic in the same way.

"It will be interesting to see if time use reverts to a pre-pandemic pattern after this crisis is over, or if some changes will be lasting ones.”