The final chapter of a gender-based statistical report shows that Canadian women are still doing most of the household chores, but men are adding more to their workload.
The report found that between 1986 and 2015 the amount of time women spent on housework decreased by an average of 42 minutes per day, while the average time men spent working around the house increased 24 minutes.
The gender gap remains with women spending an overall 2.8 hours per day working around the house, compared to the 1.9 hours spent by men.
In general, women spend more time working than men, averaging 7.8 hours per day of paid and unpaid housework and caregiving hours, compared to 7.6 for Canadian men.
Women split their time evenly, totalling 3.9 hours per day for both while men averaged 2.4 hours of unpaid work compared to 5.3 hours of paid work.
When it comes to routine child-care tasks on a given day, women once again spend more time than men, totalling one hour more per day.
Not only are also more likely than men to provide care for an adult family member or friend, but when they do they are considerably more supportive. In 2015 Stats Canada found that three times as many women provided the extra care, and spent nearly twice as much time doing so.
The Stats Canada findings are part of based on 2015, 2010 and 1986 data of women and men aged 25 to 54 from the final chapter of the seventh edition of Women in Canada: A Gender-based Statistical Report.
**Housework refers to a wide range of chores geared toward maintaining household members, their home and property, as well as their vehicles. Gender specialization in housework—that is, women and men performing different household tasks—contributes to the gender gap in time spent on housework, as women tend to do tasks that are routine and repetitive, such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, and shopping, while men do tasks that are more episodic, such as taking out the garbage, house and car repairs, mowing the lawn, and gardening.**