Women in the UK are still doing the lion’s share of unpaid household work in shared homes while also working in paid employment. A new data analysis of employed adults in the UK has found that although men in households with dependent children recorded more paid work than women, women spent considerably more time on unpaid household work and childcare. However, when men live on their own, the data shows a far smaller difference in unpaid housework compared with women who live on their own.
Recently released data from the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) Time Use Survey, March 2026 (published 22 October) shows that employed women in shared households without dependent children spend an average of over 40 minutes more each day on unpaid household work than men. The data puts the daily averages at 140 minutes for women and 99.4 minutes for men in these households. Over a week, that difference amounts to approximately four hours and 44 minutes.
These figures cover people living with others, including relatives or housemates, not couples exclusively. The category ‘other unpaid household work’ includes adult care and volunteering, but excludes childcare, DIY and gardening.
The gap is not limited to one type of household, either. Women recorded more ‘other unpaid’ household work than men in shared households with and without dependent children. For people living alone, however, the recorded gap was much smaller, raising questions about how sharing a household might influence the division of unpaid work.
The gap further widens when childcare is considered for employed adults living in households with dependent children. Women in this group recorded an average of 96.3 minutes a day on unpaid childcare, compared with 55.4 minutes for men: a gap of over 40 minutes.
Combining the childcare and other unpaid household work categories shows that women record over 90 minutes a day more than men, equivalent to about ten and a half hours over a week. These statistics provide strong evidence of very real inequalities in both activities separately. A note of caution, however: as the figures compare different groups of adults, they cannot establish that having children itself causes the imbalance to grow.
The picture changes again when considering paid employment alongside unpaid responsibilities.
Among employed adults living with dependent children, men recorded an average of five and a half hours (332.7 minutes) of paid work daily, compared with three and three-quarter hours (222.5 minutes) for women. Of the combined time spent on paid work, childcare and other unpaid household work, paid employment accounted for 67% of men’s time. It was only 46.7% of women’s: a gap of over 20 percentage points.
Despite the difference in how their time was divided, men recorded slightly more time across these activities overall. They averaged around 20 minutes a day more than women across all days, including weekends, rather than typical working-week schedules. These figures show that men and women divide their time differently between paid jobs and unpaid responsibilities, but they don’t tell us who works more overall.
Everyone included in the analysis was employed; however, the figures do not account for differences in working arrangements, such as full-time and part-time hours.
Although we can’t get an explanation for these numbers directly from the source, previous research suggests that attitudes towards gender roles may be at play.
A 2025 study published in European Societies, using data from UK couples, found that beliefs in traditional gender roles were associated with women spending more time on housework and men spending less. The study also found that both partners’ individual attitudes were associated with how domestic work was divided.
Separate research using earlier UK household data, published by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, similarly reported that exposure to more egalitarian attitudes around gender roles was associated with more equal sharing of domestic work. Despite this, the researchers also found that women undertook most housework in 72% of observations involving British dual-earner couples.
The 2024 working paper found that personal preference alone could not explain why women undertook more housework than men. In fact, the researchers concluded that “women dislike domestic chores as much as (or even more than) men do”.
For employed adults living alone, however, the picture is less clear. Solo household men recorded an average of 119.9 minutes of ‘other unpaid’ household work daily, compared with 115.1 minutes for women. The data seems to show that they are doing 4.8 minutes more housework a day than their solo female counterparts. However, the overlapping 95% confidence intervals mean we cannot be certain that this observed difference reflects a real contrast. The ONS survey records people’s main activities, so it may not fully capture work done alongside other tasks.
It is clear that childcare is not the whole story behind this unequal division of household work. Previous research points towards traditional gender roles as one explanation, but the question of why these inequalities persist remains largely unanswered.