Career women work longer hours than men

Housework and child care are condemning millions of career women to much longer working days than men, a major report claims today.

Women with full time careers still do the bulk of household chores

Women who go out to work still do the bulk of household chores, according to the study by Cambridge University of more than 30,000 people.

So while men may spend longer at the office, it is women who work more each week if domestic and paid employment is added together.

Several commentators have argued that the "have it all" woman with a career, children and husband has turned into the "do-it-all woman".

Shirley Conran, author of the 1975 bestseller Superwoman and founder of the Work-Life Balance Trust, said recently that women needed to fight for "domestic democracy", with men sharing a bigger burden of the chores and child care at home.

Today's European Union-funded report, which examined working practices across member states, says that the average man in full-time employment works about 55 hours a week.

In the UK that figure includes about 3.6 hours commuting, and eight hours of domestic work such as cleaning, cooking and child care.

By contrast, the average working week for a woman in full-time employment in the EU is 68 hours.

For British women that comprises 40 hours in the office, 3.3 hours commuting and 23 hours a week spent doing domestic work.

But even women who work part time put in longer hours overall than men in full-time work, because they do so many household chores.

Women with part-time jobs work on average 57 hours a week. That is made up of 21.3 hours in paid work, 2.4 hours commuting and 32.7 hours of domestic work.

The domestic workload also prevents millions of women from working the long office hours typically required to break into the top management jobs on high salaries, the report says.

Many more women with school-age children are only able to work part-time because they have to pick their children up at 3.30pm, cook their dinner and help them with their homework.

The upshot is that three quarters of the EU workforce is still managed by men and just nine per cent of full-time male workers are managed by women, says the report.

In the UK, women make up just under half the workforce, but they represent less than a third of legislators, managers and senior officials.

The lifestyle divide must change if women are to have equal opportunities in the workplace, the report says.

"The working lifestyles of most people in Europe still seem to be determined by gender," said Dr Brendan Burchell, a senior lecturer in sociology, who will present the study in Brussels today.

He added: "A lot of women feel they don't have choices. They have children with a partner and reduce their hours in the early stages of a child's life and when they want to re-establish themselves in their careers and in terms of their earning power, they are so far behind their husbands.

"There should be more equal career breaks between men and women when children are born - for instance, by encouraging men to take their parental leave entitlements."

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