How do men and women use time differently?

As of 2023, women spend more time on unpaid labor than men.

Updated February 12, 2025 by the USAFacts team

People’s priorities and obligations are driven by factors like age, family situation, employment, and other demographics.

Gender is another key factor: 2023 government data shows that the average man tends to spend more time on paid work, while women spend more time on unpaid labor like housework and caregiving than men do.

What activities do men and women spend time on?

In 2023, employed men ages 15 and over spent 7.47 hours each weekday on paid work and work-related activities, while women spent about an hour less — 6.52 hours a day.

Combining paid work with typically unpaid labor like cooking, cleaning, and caring for family members gives us a more comprehensive measure of total labor performed and brings men and women closer in terms of hours or labor: 8.78 hours for men, and 8.86 for women.

While employed men and women perform around the same amount of all types of work, men spent more time on paid labor.

The gender difference applies to unemployed people: aggregating paid work, household activities, and caretaking reveals that unemployed men worked 2.47 hours on weekdays, while unemployed women worked 3.63 hours, a difference of an hour and nine minutes. Most of women’s additional time — 52 minutes — was spent on unpaid household activity.

How much time do men and women spend on childcare?

Women spend more time caring for children than men do.

Women with children younger than 6 spent nearly an hour more every day with their kids. This included more than 50% more time than men traveling for their children, over twice as much time providing physical care, and more than five times as much time on education.

Among those caring for school-age children, women spent around half an hour more on primary childcare duties than men did.

In addition to dedicated care time, women spent more time caring for children while also doing other tasks — household chores, personal care, and more. Among parents with children under 13, women spent an hour and 21 minutes more than men juggling childcare and other activities.

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How do time-use gender disparities show up in different age brackets?

Women of all ages spend more time on household activities than men. Women across ages also spend more time purchasing goods and services, although this particular gap lessens with age. After age 55, a communication gap opens as women spend more and more time staying in touch with people via phone, mail, and email as they age.

Meanwhile, men outspend on leisure and sports compared to women at all ages, although older women are closer to men than younger women.

Does race factor into how men and women spend time?

Hispanic/Latina women spent an hour and 19 minutes more on household activities than Hispanic/Latino men, the biggest margin among people of all races or ethnicities.

The gap was the smallest among Black/African American women, who spent 0.77 hours more per day on household work than their male counterparts.

Women of all races also spent more time caretaking. The largest disparity here was among Asians — Asian women spent twice as much time on care than Asian men. The smallest gap was between white men and women.

What contributes to disparities in time use?

According to a June 2022 Department of Labor Women's Bureau blog, gendered stereotypes and cultural expectations impact the disparities in time spent caregiving and managing the home, and public policies — for instance, around access to paid leave — may also reinforce those roles.

A 2023 news release from the Women’s Bureau reported that "unpaid family caregiving reduces a mother’s lifetime earnings by 15%."

Why does the government track how Americans spend their time?

Time-use data comes from the American Time Use Survey, first proposed in the Unremunerated Work Act of 1993, which proposed that the Bureau of Labor Statistics “conduct time use surveys of unremunerated work performed...and calculate the monetary value of such unremunerated work, separately for men and women.”

While Congress did not pass the bill, it was a catalyst prompting the Bureau of Labor Statistics to begin measuring the value of unpaid work.

The Bureau of Labor Statistic eventually launched the American Time Use Survey in 2003. Every year, the bureau interviews randomly selected individuals about how much time they spent on different activities, such as cooking or working, during the previous day.

Experts use survey data to measure the time Americans dedicate to uncompensated work — including housework, childcare, and eldercare — as well as the time they spend on paid work and leisure.

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