Women in Switzerland still do more unpaid work than men

Women are still doing more unpaid work than men in households, gardens, care and for charities. Keystone / Peter Klaunzer

New figures show that men and women in Switzerland did unpaid work worth CHF434 billion ($463 billion) in 2020.

Women volunteers accounted for 60% of the total 9.8 billion hours of unpaid work completed, according to a statement by the Federal Statistical Office, which was published to coincide with the United Nations International Volunteer Day on December 5.

This compares with 7.6 billion hours of paid work that year.

While women performed 60% of the unpaid work, men accounted for 61% of the paid work, the office said on Monday. However, there has been a steady equalling out over the last 20 years. In 1997, 67% of unpaid work still fell to women.

The figures on unpaid work come from a Swiss labour force survey and are based on self-declaration.

According to these figures, the average time spent per week on unpaid work increased over ten years from 27.9 to 28.7 hours for women and from 16.2 to 19.1 hours for men.

Gardening, care work, charities 

Unpaid work includes household and gardening work, caring for children and relatives as well as voluntary work in associations, political organisations or church charities. With 7.6 billion hours, domestic work accounted for three-quarters of the total volume of unpaid work.

To measure the monetary value of unpaid work, it was calculated how much private households would have to pay a person engaged via the market to perform these unpaid activities. The average labour costs by comparable occupational groups served as comparative variables.