Women do 21 hours more unpaid work than men a week, national survey finds

Women were doing 21 hours more unpaid work than men a week and experiencing higher levels of psychological distress in the year before the pandemic, a new report has found.

The annual Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) survey is a nationally representative study involving interviews with 17,500 people in 9,500 households.

While household incomes were rising again after years of stagnation, the national snapshot shows poverty was also increasing, and two groups that would be hit hard by the pandemic were already disadvantaged.

Women and young people both reported poorer mental health, while the former were lumped with more of the burden of unpaid work, and younger people were already finding it harder to crack into the labour market.

In 2019, women were doing far more unpaid work than men, the study found, with the gap being particularly large in heterosexual couples with dependent children.

Over the life of the Hilda survey that gap has narrowed, from women doing 28.8 hours a week more unpaid labour than men in 2002 to 20.9 hours in 2019.

Housework was found to be the largest form of unpaid work, followed by caring for children, with the amount of unpaid work escalating sharply after the birth of a first child.