A pioneering study of how housework is divided by couples from Britain’s various ethnic groups has concluded that black Caribbean men are the most assiduous in sharing the load.
Prof Heather Laurie, from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, and Dr Man-Yee Kan, from the University of Oxford, examined the attitudes and behaviour of almost 30,000 couples tracked by the UK’s household panel study, Understanding Society.
Predictably, across all ethnic groups, women spend significantly more hours on housework than men – the average British man spends around six hours a week on housework compared with 14 hours a week for women, who carry out 70% of the chores.
These figures are also typical for the average white couple. “There are fairly entrenched differences for white British couples,” said Laurie. “We continue to see big differences between what men and women do. Women take on the bulk of the housework.” But across ethnic groups there is considerable variation and the survey does not reflect well on the willingness of white males to do their fair share.
“We found both differences and similarities among ethnic groups, but were surprised to see that in multicultural Britain today, white British couples are not necessarily the most modern and egalitarian in their outlook on housework,” said Laurie. “Previously we haven’t known anything about the distribution of housework across different ethnic groups. It’s really interesting to see how much difference there is. More so for women than men.”
The study found that black Caribbean men in Britain do more than seven hours of housework a week – compared with the 13.5 hours undertaken by their partners – and equivalent to almost 40% of the workload.
“Work done in the US suggested that the historical roots of a lot of black Caribbeans mean they have a more egalitarian family structure, and we seem to see that here,” said Laurie. “And there has always been a strong tradition of black Caribbean women working in the labour market.”
Black African men also do more than seven hours of chores a week – compared with the 15.5 hours performed by their female partners – a third of the couple’s combined workload. While Indian men undertake almost seven hours of cleaning and cooking, this was only around a quarter of the overall load, as their partners did more than 20 hours a week of housework. Pakistani men did under five hours a week, less than a fifth of the 24 hours done by their partners.
These figures are averages taken across British ethnic groups and are not weighted to take into account socio-economic factors. For instance, Indian and Bangladeshi men who have a degree do more housework than those without. For all men, having an employed spouse significantly increased their housework hours, by 1.2 hours a week, but – set against this – being in paid employment decreased their housework hours by three hours a week.
Once factors such as education, employment status and whether an individual is a first- or second-generation immigrant are taken into account, to provide a more like-for-like comparison, it emerges that men from Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia perform, on average, over two hours more of housework a week than white men.
The like-for-like differences are more marked among women. Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women do between four and six hours of chores a week more than white women.
“There is no doubt at all that education and employment affect how domestic labour is organised,” said Laurie. She pointed out that women from many Asian backgrounds have problems entering the labour market and that only by addressing this issue could there be greater equality on the domestic front.
“The policy implications [of our research] are really about trying to ensure we have equality in the labour market and education, which feeds into equality in the household.”