Some women like doing the housework – survey

Most working women do the majority of household tasks, but would rather do some of the tasks themselves than leave them to their partner, an Australian survey has found.

Most working women do the majority of household tasks, but would rather do some of the tasks themselves than leave them to their partner, an Australian survey has found.

Researchers at the University of Western Sydney asked over 600 career women about their attitudes to household chores. They found nearly half did around 10 hours of housework a week. Over 85 per cent said they did most of the housework and some said they enjoyed doing them.

The favourite household chores were cooking, parenting and shopping, the Wringing out the Future survey found.

Some 85 per cent did not want their partner to do the laundry in case they made mistakes. Most said they liked doing the washing and that it was easy. The tasks they least liked were clearning and ironing. Nearly 50 per cent said they would pay for a cleaner if they could afford to and 18 per cent would be happy to pay someone to do the ironing.

The survey found that they managed to combine work and family life by taking an organised, structured approach. Some 86 per cent were looking to develop smarter ways of getting tasks done, such as delegating to other members of the family or asking trusted friends, family members or others for tips.

Women said they did 91 per cent of parenting tasks; 88 per cent were mainly responsible for the shopping; 86 per cent did the laundry; 78 per cent did the cooking; 76 per cent did the cleaning and 71 per cent dealt with the family finances. Only 35 per cent did the gardening [12 per cent was outsourced to someone other than their partner]. Some 86 per cent of the women said society expects them to be career women but also to be supermums.

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