Sex
Reading these charts
When reading the charts in this publication:- solid bars have significant differences in time to at least one other group
- hatched bars have no significant difference to any other group
- missing bars mean that this value has been suppressed due to small numbers of responses for that breakdown
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1 Introduction
This section discusses how men and women spent their time in 2023. Respondents were asked the following question:
“What is your sex?” and given the options of Female or Male to choose from. This analysis includes 842 diary days for females and 737 for males.
Results below are discussed in terms of differences between women and men instead of females and males for readability.
Users should note that wider confidence intervals suggest lower precision and generally less reliable estimates. Small sample sizes can also affect estimates, thus caution is advised when interpreting results based on sample sizes of 50 or fewer respondents, as is the case for ‘Study’ in ‘Did unpaid work - with or without children’.
There are two types of charts in this publication. The combined charts show the four general activity types, while the second type shows the activity type broken down by specific activity. The charts showing broken down activities only show these categories where significant differences have been observed. Therefore, if a category is missing, differences between groups for this category were not significant. The data for all categories can be found in the time_use_tables.xlsx.
1.1 Notable changes from OTUS 2020
It is worth noting that in 2023 both men and women spent less time on developmental childcare than in 2020. There was also an increase in social/leisure activities, which was particularly the case for men. While causation cannot be established at this point, it is possible that this difference is due to changing behaviour during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020. Future data will help to establish if the 2023 data is more in line with standard patterns of time use.
2 Activity type
2.1 Women spent more time on average on unpaid work than men.
Figure 1: A bar chart showing average time spent on the different activity types, by sex, Scotland, 2023
In 2023 women spent longer in unpaid work (5 hours and 20 minutes on average per day) compared to men (4 hours and 7 minutes). There were no differences between women and men in time spent on the rest of the activities, including paid work, free time, and personal care.
3 Paid work
Although the mean for men was higher than for women for total paid work, as seen in Figure 1, this difference was not found to be significant.
There were no significant differences between men and women when paid work was disaggregated by place of work, i.e. working from home or away from home.
4 Unpaid work
4.1 Women spent more time on housework/cooking activities compared to men.
Figure 2: A bar chart showing average time spent on unpaid work, by sex, Scotland, 2023
When unpaid work was broken down by activity, women spent longer on housework/cooking each day (2 hours and 2 minutes) compared to men (1 hour and 18 minutes).
In an average day, 89% of women spent time on housework/cooking compared to 82% of men.
5 Personal care
There were no significant differences between women and men in time spent on personal care.
6 Free time
6.1 Men spent longer on other leisure activities compared to women.
Figure 3: A bar chart showing average time spent on free time activities, by sex, Scotland, 2023
Looking at free time broken down by activity type, women spent less time on other leisure activities on average per day (3 hours and 1 minutes) compared to men (3 hours and 55 minutes). Other leisure activities include activities such as playing games/ computer gaming, listening to music/podcasts/audiobooks, streaming TV or videos on the internet for entertainment, watching TV and other internet-based activities.
7 Variations in outcome by populations who did a specific activity
7.1 When only looking at those who participated in each activity, women spent more time in unpaid work compared to men.
Figure 4: A bar chart showing average time spent on the four activity types, by sex, only including those who participated in the activity, Scotland, 2023
When only considering the proportion of the sample who participated in a given activity type, significant differences were identified for unpaid work, where women spent more time on this than men. Differences for women and men on the other three activity types were not significant, which was similar to the trend shown on Figure 1.
8 Analysis of those who did paid work
When only considering the proportion of the sample who engaged in paid work, there were no differences between men and women in time spent on paid work.
9 Analysis of those who did unpaid work
9.1 When only looking at those who did unpaid work, women spent longer on housework/cooking activities compared to men.
Figure 5: A bar chart showing average time spent on unpaid work by sex, only including those who participated in the activity, Scotland, 2023
When only considering the proportion of the sample who engaged in unpaid work, women spent more time on housework/cooking compare to men (2 hours and 16 minutes and 1 hour and 35 minutes respectively), which is the same pattern as when looking at the whole sample (Figure 2).
10 Analysis by activity type for respondents with or without children
10.1 Women with children spent longest on unpaid work, while men without children spent the longest on free time.
Figure 6: A bar chart showing average time spent on the four activity types for those who did and did not have children, by sex , Scotland, 2023
When comparing those in the sample who did and did not have children, there were differences between men and women in time spent on paid work, unpaid work and free time but not on personal care.
Men with children spent more time on paid work (4 hours and 3 minutes per day on average) compared to women or men without children (2 hours and 20 minutes and 2 hours and 33 minutes respectively). The difference for paid work between men with children and women with children was not significant.
On average, respondents with children tended to spend less time on free time compared to respondents of the same sex without children. Men without children spent the most time on free time activities (5 hours and 41 minutes), while women with children spent the least time on this (3 hours and 15 minutes).
In terms of unpaid work, women with children spent the longest on this activity of all other groups (6 hours and 27 minutes), including men with children (4 hours and 38 minutes).
11 Analysis by activity type for respondents with or without children who did unpaid work
11.1 When only considering those who participated in unpaid work, women with children spent the longest on housework/cooking activities compared to men with children.
Figure 7: A bar chart showing average time spent on unpaid work for the proportion of the sample who participated in the activity and did/did not have children, by sex, Scotland, 2023
Within the respondents who participated in unpaid work, differences were found between women and men with and without children in the time spent on housework/cooking, other unpaid work (excluding travel and housework) and study.
On average, women with children spent longer on housework/cooking (2 hours and 16 minutes) compared to men with children (1 hour and 33 minutes). There were no significant difference for men or women without children.
Men without children spent longer on other unpaid work (excluding travel and housework) (2 hours and 15 minutes) compared to women without children (1 hour and 27 minutes) and to men with children (1 hour and 23 minutes).
Women without children spent more time on studying (6 hours and 18 minutes) compared to men without children (2 hours and 25 minutes). There were 11% women without children who spent time on studying and 8% men without children who did. Differences between other groups for this activity were not significant.
Due to the sample of men with children who spent time on study being very small (3%), this category is missing from the chart.