House Cleaning - A Battle of the Sexes?

Posted on 12/04/2016

Why Men Do Less Housework Than Women

Gender equality is not something that most people think about on a daily basis. It is an important matter for some organizations and a mission for others, but when it comes to simple everyday activities such as home cleaning it’s pushed to the side.

It is interesting to note that an actual ‘battle of the sexes’ is still evident in housework chores. A recent survey on housekeeping shows surprising results in what could be viewed as the cleaning wars. It is curious to see the different ways of thinking that gentlemen and ladies present on the topic of domestic cleaning. Here are the highlights:

-    More women spend time cleaning every week - at least 37% women invest 7 hours of their time in multiple cleaning chores, as opposed to just 20% of men. It would appear that men prefer to spend their time otherwise and not bother with house cleaning at all, or rather leave it to someone else. Perhaps booking with a cleaning company is the preferred alternative? Surprisingly, 4 of surveyed men admitted to not having cleaned in a month.

-    Women spend most of their free time in house cleaning chores - a whopping 58% of all women in the survey state that most of their leisure time is spent at home, doing housework and home cleaning chores. As for men, the vast majority doesn’t even bother with such chores at all, or bother very little. 40% of surveyed men spend only a third of their time on such tasks.

-    It appears there is a division of tasks for both sexes - surveyed men and women shared their thoughts on what cleaning tasks they are mostly responsible for at home. It seems that women are involved in a lot more bathroom sanitising, kitchen cleaning and doing the laundry. As for ‘men’s’ tasks, work in the garden, taking care of the rubbish and doing the dishes are included.

-    What causes problems? - it is important to note that cleaning and money topics are in fact shown as equally likely to lead to arguments in the family. Ladies pointed out that they are most likely to be irritated by leftover crumbs on various surfaces, clothes lying around the room and toilet seat left up. As for gentlemen, 25% of them won’t even bring up the topic of household cleaning, let alone make a problem of it. However, they still pointed out one thing they get annoyed with - leaving hair in the shower.

-    What are the most hated chores - surely when it comes to domestic cleaning, all chores are considered bothersome. However, there are certain tasks pointed out by both sexes as particularly hated - sanitising toilets, ironing clothes and oven cleaning. It definitely goes to show where sharing the responsibility would result in mutual understanding and fewer quarrels at home.

-    Is there anything men and women agree on - yes, it would appear that both sexes share the same opinion on at least one chore - that cleaning the kitchen is far more important than cleaning the bathroom. It seems that the kitchen is still widely considered as the most social and used room of the home, which is not that surprising.

-    Attention, please! - One alarming tendency that the survey outlined is that nearly half of all parents don’t actually make children do chores. Could it be that it is such belief that children should not be bothered with cleaning that leads to division of the sexes at a later stage?

The results of the survey show an interesting reality and could be used to determine potential causes of problems in families.