Who's Doing Europe's Housework?

Big strides have been made in recent years to improve gender equality in our society, but according to the latest figures (published in German) from Eurostat and the Federal Statistical Office of Germany there is at least one area where we still have a lot of work to do - housework.

On average in the EU, 79 percent of women cook and/or do housework each day, compared to only 34 percent of men. The gap is the smallest in Sweden, where 74 percent of women perform these tasks on a regular basis with an encouraging 56 percent of men chipping in, too. The gap in the UK is still significant, where the figures are 85 percent and 49 percent. At the other end of the scale, women in Greece take care of the lion's share of the house work. Here, the 85 percent of women that cook and do housework daily only get assistance from 16 percent of the country's men.