Irish women and men work very similar hours when the amount of paid and unpaid work they do each day is added together, a new OECD survey reveals. But they split their work in different ways, with men doing more paid labour and women more unpaid house work.
According to the study, the average Irish person spends about eight hours a day working, with the average man spending around six of those in paid work and two in unpaid work in the home, while women spend on average around five hours on unpaid work and three on paid work.
Irish men and women rank lower than average on time spent on “personal care”, which includes eating, sleeping and accessing medical services, with men coming 22nd out of 26 countries surveyed, and women coming 20th.
However, Irish men on average spend 51 more minutes than women on leisure time. Irish people in general ranked above the OECD average for leisure time, but were considerably outranked by those in Britain and France.