Women dedicate 17 hours per week more than men to unpaid care work.

Omissions

• The MEP did not cite a specific source, time period, or survey wave for the 17-hour figure, making precise verification difficult.
• Unpaid care work definitions vary across studies: some include only direct care (children, elderly, dependent adults), while others also include routine housework such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry, which can shift the gap by several hours per week.
• The most recent harmonised EU time-use data (HETUS 2020 wave) had limited availability at the time of the claim; much of the cited research draws on the 2010 HETUS wave or national surveys, meaning the figure may be outdated.
• No primary official source (Eurostat HETUS, EIGE index database) was found that explicitly states a 17-hour-per-week gender gap for the EU as a whole. The figure appears mainly in secondary policy and advocacy publications.

Sources

• PrimaryEuropean Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)Platform-working women spend 17 hours on unpaid care work per week compared to 11 hours for platform-working men — a gap of 6 hours, not 17, and limited to the platform-worker subpopulation.
• AcademicSocial Indicators Research (Springer)On average, European women spend about 4.5 hours per day on unpaid work activities, against 2.5 hours for European men — a gap of roughly 2 hours per day or 14 hours per week.
• SecondaryEuronewsWomen on average spend two hours more per day on unpaid work than men across Europe, equivalent to approximately 14 hours per week.
• SecondaryPublic Affairs BruxellesWomen spend 17 hours per week more than men on unpaid care work.