Women overall spend a little more time than men doing 'productive work', which includes paid and unpaid work. Where the big difference lies is in the balance between the amount of paid and unpaid work done by women and men. Men average two hours more paid work per day than women, while women spend two hours more per day doing unpaid work. Women spend around twice as long as men in activities such as meal preparation and other household work, and nearly three times as long looking after other people in the home. Interestingly, for both men and women, the most common type of unpaid work for people outside the home is looking after a child.
Rural men spend, on average almost an hour's extra paid work per day, compared to urban men.
The Time Use Survey was conducted over a full year, from July 1998 to June 1999. Results from the survey will be released progressively over the next few months. A number of countries conduct time use surveys every five years.