By Yoon Ja-young
Staff Reporter
Most young men and women agree that housework should be shared among spouses. It seems, however, that they have very different ideas when it comes to "How much work each should actually do."
According to a survey by Job Korea, men expect their wives to do more of the household chores, while females expect their spouses to take exactly half of the burden.
The survey on 1,017 salaried workers in their 20s and 30s asked what seems to be the golden section in sharing of the housework.
Half of the men answered that they ideally want their wives to take over the main responsibilities while husbands work as assistants.
More than half the females said that the domestic responsibilities should be shared equally between the man and the wife.
The survey also showed that women are doing a lot more housework than their spouses. It mattered little whether she was a full-time homemaker or a working mom.
In case of double income couples, around half said that wives were doing 70 percent of the chores while their spouses were doing the rest. One out of five said the wives were doing 90 percent of the housework, while the men were doing only 10 percent.
Those who shared housework equally only totaled 23.4 percent.
When the female is a full-time homemaker, 40 percent of the wives were doing 90 percent of the housework. Those who shared the work in a ratio of 70 to 30 totaled 44.5 percent.
The unfair divide often caused quarrels at home.
Among couples, 68.9 percent said they had argued with their spouse over chores.
When asked what caused the dispute, 37.2 percent picked unfair sharing of the burden.
One out of three people were not satisfied with their partner's way of splitting the tasks.
They also pointed out that they tend to pass along unpleasant jobs such as dumping food leftovers or cleaning the bathroom to their other half.
Another survey by Professor Yoo Gye-sook at Kyunghee University showed that females with jobs were dedicating seven times more time to housework than their husbands.
The survey showed that during the weekdays, the females were spending four hours and three minutes on average on housework while their husbands spent only 34 minutes.
"Even among the double income couples, household jobs are done mostly by females. Efforts should be made to share it more fairly so that it doesn't cause conflict," Yoo said.
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