The city of Madrid conducted a survey in June 2022 to collect information about the sociodemographic situation of households. A total of 8,040 people from across various districts of the city were interviewed, of which 5,496 responded to questions regarding distribution of household chores between men and women.
Each square represents just under 55 people, which is 1% of the sample population.
Out of that sample a slight majority were women.
When asked who does the most in the household, across different types of chores, most people answered that both women and men are equally involved. Some people considered that most tasks were not taken care of by either, most likely implying external help.
For those who do notice a difference, the woman is often seen as responsible for more tasks.
Interestingly, respondents majoritarely perceive themselves or somebody of the same sex to do to the most chores. People who said that the man in the household does the most were majoritarily men themselves. The same goes for women who mostly said that women do the most.
This self-representation is partly explained by the fact that some of the surveyed people are either single parents or other potential single residents.
However, this proportion remains small and the majority of interviewed people were part of a couple.
While the distributions within each household type are relatively consistent with the overall responses, men are proportionally slightly more involved in chores when part of a couple without children than a couple with children.
Most chores are seen to be equally undertaken by women and men, or by neither. This is consistent with the overall distribution of household responsibilities.
When comparing women and men, women are more largely responsible than men for cooking, shopping, washing clothes and taking care of others including children and the elderly.
A majority of households consider that cooking is taken care of by the woman.
In comparison, men are more often associated to administrative tasks and repairing things in the house.
A majority of households consider repairing to be a male activity.
When comparing the chores that most women and men respectively do, a striking observation is that the ones that women are mainly responsible for are recurring tasks whereas the ones conducted mainly by men are more occasional occurences. This difference in types of chores and frequency is a reality observed through different studies, such as this one conducted by gender expert Kate Mangino.
The data from this survey, covering thousands of different households in Madrid, reveals that a majority of homes are overall being taken care of by both women and men.
However, looking into the gender of the respondents as well as into more specific households tasks, a recurring pattern can undeniably be identified, underlying persisting disparities of responsibilities between women and men.