Media Clipping — Friday, November 6, 1998, The Daily News

Women busier today

A closer look at work habits in Nova Scotia

By Shaune MacKinlay

Here are some of the findings of a study released yesterday by GPI Atlantic, called The Economic Value of Unpaid Housework and Child Care in Nova Scotia:

• Nova Scotians, both men and women, contributed 941 million hours of unpaid household work to the economy in 1997. That's 25 per cent more time than they devoted to paying jobs.
• If unpaid work was valued at an average rate of $9.20 per hour for housework and $7.58 an hour for child care, it would be worth $8.5 billion per year to the economy.
• Working mothers put in an average workday of more than 11 hours, including seven hours at a paying job, two hours 15 minutes of housework, an hour devoted to children, and 50 minutes shopping.
• On average, Nova Scotian women spend two hours per day more than men on household work, including chores and childcare. They spend three times as long cooking and doing dishes and almost seven times longer cleaning and doing laundry.

Same housework, plus career to balance - study

For women in Nova Scotia, the drudgery of 40 years ago could have been yesterday

Women do almost the same amount of housework they did in 1961, even though far more have to squeeze it in after a full day on the job, says a new study

In 1961, women did 67.6 per cent of unpaid work—everything from washing dishes and shopping to reading a bedtime story. In 1992, they were still doing 65.5 per cent of that work.

Also, the percentage of working women with a child under two shot up to 62.3 per cent in 1995 from 25 per cent in 1961.

Unpaid household work is valued at $8.5 billion per year to the economy.

The findings were included in a study released yesterday by GPI Atlantic, called The Economic Value of Unpaid Housework and Child Care in Nova Scotia.

"It's studies like this one that show how far we still have to go to develop a society that values the different contributions of women and men fairly," said Patricia DoyleBedwell, chairwoman of the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women.

The report, which gathered its figures from Statistics Canada and other sources, proved the old adage that a woman's work is never done holds true now more than ever.

It found working mothers put in four hours of unpaid work after they leave their jobs, for an average workday of more than 11 hours.

The dishwasher, microwave, and other appliances that promised to make short work of chores haven't done so.

In fact, fulltime housewives have seen little change in their working hours since 1913.

One explanation might be there are fewer family members to share the work and bigger houses to maintain, says the study

As much stress as women are under now, DoyleBedwell said they will never go back to the way things were.

"If we're going to be out there working, then we need to have that support," she said.

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