Survey: Unpaid labour highlights gender gap in Switzerland

Men and women in Switzerland carry out an impressive amount of unpaid labour each year but most of that work is done by women, according to the findings of two government reports presented on Thursday.

Men and women in Switzerland carry out an impressive amount of unpaid labour each year but most of that work is done by women, according to the findings of two government reports presented on Thursday.

The Federal Statistics Office said the value of the many hours spent on housework, charity activities and volunteer services would equal about SFr215 billion ($143 billion) in wages per year. That amounts to a hefty 58 percent of Switzerland’s Gross Domestic Product.

Unpaid work was mostly defined as housework (75 percent), family care (16 percent) and volunteer and charity services (9 percent).

While the overall weekly workload was the same for men and women, the report clearly showed that women were doing most of the unpaid labour.

Women spent 31 hours a week doing traditional housework and looking after the family. Men, on the other hand, were investing 16 hours a week.

In families with children younger than 15, the gender gap was even wider, according to the government reports: mothers worked 52 hours a week for the family, fathers 22.

The head of the Federal Office for Equality Patricia Schulz said the statistics clearly highlight the continuing gender gap in Switzerland.

“I think we are looking at a society in which women and men still have very different roles and different opportunities in their lives,” Schulz said. “Women are simply in a worse situation than men.”

She said women would never be able to achieve full equality in Swiss society if the workload continued to be divided so unevenly between women and men.

Schulz added that Switzerland was also wasting its resources as a lot of money was spent on educating and training women who were then often limited to looking after the family for the rest of their lives.


Sources: APD, sda-ats