Albanian women work more than men, survey shows

TIRANA, Dec. 19 – A recent survey has shown that women, though much less involved in paid work, are the hardest workers in the Albanian society.
The Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities and the National Albanian Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) published the preliminary results of the first survey on “Time Use” in Albania, which aims to provide information on the way Albanian people spend their time. A special focus is given to the time-use -gender gap related to the paid and unpaid work.
The Albanian daily time use structures follow similar patterns to those of some European countries: there is a substantial difference in the gender division of paid and unpaid work. Albanian women spend significantly more time than men on unpaid work activities.
95 percent of women, aged 15-64 years old and only 37 per cent of men aged 15-64 years old, are engaged in housework, child care, food preparation, shopping, and other activities related to unpaid work in the weekdays. The same behavior pattern is featured on the weekends and for all three age-groups analyzed for this publication.
With equal numbers of hours in paid work, women’s total work exceeds men’s.
Men spend significantly more time than women in paid work, both as to hours and minutes and in terms of the proportion undertaking paid work on an average day. Only 32 percent of women spend time in paid work compared to 56 percent of men.
Both women and men in rural settings spend more time working than in the urban environment. The single group spending the longest hours in total work – both on weekdays and weekends – is that of women in rural settings.
Having children less than 7 years of age has a great impact on women’s use of time. They do much more unpaid work compared to women with older children. For men there is hardly any such difference, their time use seems to be very little affected by having small children or not.
The fieldwork for TUS data collection was spread over 12 months, starting on 1st March 2010 and ending in the first week of March 2011 with 2,250 households as the sample size and the response rate in household level was 91.5 per cent.
The Time Use Survey in Albania is supported by the United Nations and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).