The survey measures time spent on a typical day, across all activity types (from sleeping to eating to work and childcare) by the U.S. civilian noninstitutional population age 15 and over, on both weekdays and weekends.
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| Source: 2011 American Time Use Survey and author's calculations |
In childcare, the differences are even more dramatic. Women perform 2.3 times as much childcare-related work as men, on average.
However, when work-for-pay is a factor, men do more work than women, averaging 3.8 hours of paid work per day, compared with 2.6 for women.
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| Source: 2011 American Time Use Survey and author's calculations |
Nevertheless, if you add up both paid work and unpaid household work, women do more work, per day, on average, than men do. Across all work categories,* women total an average of 5.45 hours of work (2.82 unpaid) compared with a total of 5.27 for men (1.46 unpaid).
Somewhat surprisingly, the results of the Time Use Survey also show that women have an edge in the sleep department, reporting more hours of sleep than men on average. This trend persists across all household types, including families with young children. In households with a youngest child under age 6, women report spending 8.7 hours sleeping per day while men spend only 8.3.
While on the surface this trend implies that women get more rest than men, the details are not entirely clear. The sleep time trend may represent more time spent trying to sleep, as women also report substantially higher rates of difficulty in falling asleep and staying asleep than men.
The 2011 results are consistent with findings from prior years in American Time Use Survey.
*Note: Work categories, in this context, include housework, food preparation and cleanup, lawn and garden maintenance, household management, caring for household members, caring for non-household members, and work (for pay).
The stats don't take into account level of effort vs. time spent. This misrepresents inefficiency as being a greater level of contribution. It also has no category for Building and Maintaining Everything You See Everywhere You Look and Saving Thousands of Dollars of Household Money Per Year. That makes it clearly anti-male, because Lawn and Garden Care is a very small part of what men do around the house, and women do it as well. Every door and window that opens with ease was greased by a man. The lawn tractor and every machine in the garage requires maintenance and men ovwrwhelmingly do this. The pool, the cars, the boat, the RV, the furnace, the hot water heater, appliances, etc. do not maintain themselves and cost thousands per year in labour if you don't do the work yourself. IKEA furniture does not build itself. The basement floor, ceiling, electrical and plumbing don't install themselves, nor does the deck, the gazebo, the pool, the fence, the hot tub, the shed, and so on. Snow doesn't shovel itself and hedges don't magically grow neatly shaped and flat on top. This article and the gender-biased data it's based on, are nonsense.
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