20th January 2004

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Women will not achieve equal opportunities in the workplace until men agree to do their fair share of housework, according to University of Ulster researchers. Although an increasing number of women now go out to work, they still continue to bear the lion’s share of the burden of running the home. Men on average do just under six hours of housework per week compared to more than 17 hours by women (this figure excludes time spent on child care). Professor Gillian Robinson and Dr Ann Marie Gray from the University of Ulster said: “Gender inequalities in all areas are rooted in social structures but also in attitudes. It is difficult to see how women will ever have the same opportunities in the labour market if equality in the private sphere is not achieved and women continue to provide more than 70% of all household and caring work”. Their research - What women want? Women and gender roles in Northern Ireland – compared attitudes expressed in three surveys in the Northern Ireland Life and Times series between 1994 and 2002. They found the perception that what women really want is a home and children has remained remarkably consistent over the years with 36% of men and women agreeing or strongly agreeing with that sentiment in 2002. Seventy per cent of respondents to the 2002 Life and Times Survey agreed that both men and women should contribute to the household income, but the survey also found that domestic responsibilities and childcare are not equally shared. Further, the researchers point out that the high cost and limited availability of childcare in Northern Ireland create problems for many working parents. Men and women were asked about a range of household chores – doing the laundry, making repairs, looking after sick family members, shopping for groceries, household cleaning and preparing meals. Only in the repairs category did males make a significant contribution. Although a majority of both men (52%) and women (72%) agreed that men ought to do a large share of the housework, the traditional gender roles within the home have proved very resistant to change. The researchers found that conservative attitudes are still fairly entrenched in Northern Ireland. Only 8% of respondents felt that women should go out to work full-time when they had a child under school age. Some 44% felt that family life suffers when a woman has a full-time job and 46% felt a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works.

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