Wives still do more housework than husbands: report

A study shows married women spend much more time on housework than their husbands, although their spouse's participation in childcare has increased. / Gettyimagesbank

By Kim Rahn

Many married women think they share childcare duties with their husbands quite equally, but in fact they bear a greater burden than their partners in other household chores, a study showed Friday.

According to the 2018 study 10,630 married women aged between 15 and 49 by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, 52 percent said they and their husbands were not sharing housework equally.

Household chores here means all housekeeping duties except for childcare.

The surveyed women said they spent about three hours and nine minutes on housework per day on weekdays and around three hours 35 minutes on weekends, compared to their husbands who spent a mere 37 minutes on weekdays and about one hour and 12 minutes on weekends.

Women in younger age groups, with a higher educational background, who were working and had fewer children showed a higher ratio of equal sharing of domestic work with their husbands. However, their perception of “equality” didn't mean real equality, because even in such groups women were spending two-to-three more times on housework than their husbands.

“It shows that women did not expect their husbands to share the housework equally from the beginning; their expectations were low, so they thought they were sharing it equally despite the time spending gap between them,” the report said.

For childcare, 61.1 percent of 6,703 women having children of elementary school age or younger said they think they share the childcare burden equally with their husbands.

On weekdays, women spent four hours and 46 minutes on childcare, and husbands, one hour 12 minutes. But on weekends, while women's time rose to around six hours and 16 minutes, the husbands' time hiked to more than three hours 20 minutes.

“It showed married couple share childcare duties more equally than other housework duties,” the authors of the study said. “It's because gender stereotypes for domestic chores are still stronger than those for childcare.”

The study also showed some changes in perception on traditional gender roles between husbands and wives.

Nearly 74 percent of married women disagreed on the traditional notion that husbands make money and wives takes care of the family, up from 64.1 percent three years ago. Fifty-four percent also disagreed with the idea that a wife needs to help her husband develop his career rather than developing her own, up from 46.3 percent in 2015.

About 56 percent of the women said mothers were more capable of raising children than men, down from 65.5 percent in 2015.

Financial support to children until college graduation

In a related survey by the institute, 59.2 percent of 11,205 married women said they would have to take care of their children financially until they graduated from college, down from 62.4 percent three years ago.

Another 17.4 percent said they would look after them until they landed jobs, followed by 14.7 percent who said until they graduated from high school; 7.1 percent, until they got married; and 1.6 percent, until death.

A household with one child spent 733,000 won ($646) per month on childrearing, compared with 1.37 million won for those with two children, 1.37 million won, and 1.61 million won for those with three. With one child, education expenses took up 35.8 percent of total childcare spending, whereas two to three children accounted for 48 percent.