Women spend an average of three times more time doing routine household chores than their male partners do, and are spending more time doing so, a recent study by the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) found.
Last year, females aged 15 to 64 spent an average of 4.41 hours doing uncompensated household work, compared with an average of 3.81 hours per day in 2016, the study found.
Some females surveyed by the ministry do as much as 3.18 hours more housework per day than the average woman in the nation, it showed.
Meanwhile, males living in the same household as the females surveyed did an average of 1.48 hours per day of housework, it found.
The uncompensated work done by women included regular housework (laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc), and caring for underage children and elderly family members, it showed.
On regular housework alone, the average woman spent an average of 2.22 hours per day last year, compared with the 0.73 hours their partners spent on it, the study found.
Chen Jau-hwa (陳瑤華), a professor at Soochow University who studies human rights, said that women are doing more at home than men, despite the modern conveniences brought by improvements in technology.
It is a “structural problem,” Chen said.
“The prevailing attitude in Taiwanese society is still that women should do housework,” she said.
Even though the government had tried to reduce the burden of daycare and elderly care on families through policies and programs, female employees of daycare center and nursing homes outnumber their male counterparts ninefold, the professor said.
“This means that what was considered ‘women’s work’ in the home is now offloaded to women elsewhere,” she said.
The situation represents a serious structural imbalance that would require a change in the overall mindset of society to overcome, she said.
“When men are willing to put more time into housework and watching children, it improves the quality of their marriages,” said Ho Pi-chen (何碧珍), executive director of ECPAT Taiwan, which is part of the worldwide ECPAT network of organizations working to end the sexual exploitation of children
Women would also be more willing to marry if the social tendency was for men to invest more energy into household duties, Ho said.
One woman surnamed Chang (張) said that due to her husband’s work schedule, she took care of all of the household duties, even though she also had a job, which meant she had to sleep less to get the housework done.
She said she hoped her husband would at least take care of his own things, which would reduce the burden on her.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) yesterday promised it would increase oversight of use of Chinese in course materials, following a social media outcry over instances of simplified Chinese characters being used, including in a final exam. People on Threads wrote that simplified Chinese characters were used on a final exam and in a textbook for a translation course at the university, while the business card of a professor bore the words: “Taiwan Province, China.” Photographs of the exam, the textbook and the business card were posted with the comments. NKUST said that other members of the faculty did not see
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians