Free time feels like the one thing everyone gets a share of, but it is not distributed equally.
A hidden burden of unpaid work means that some people, especially women, end up with systematically less leisure than others, even when they do less paid work.
TL;DR
- Among full-time employees, men generally have more leisure and personal care time than women, with an average OECD gender gap of about 45 minutes a day.
- Working-age women are systematically more likely to work long unpaid hours, from 1.7 times more likely than men in Norway to nearly 17 times in Turkey.
- Globally, women do nearly three times as much unpaid care work as men, totaling around 1.1 trillion hours a year.
The free-time figures here come from the OECD and the U.S. ATUS
ALSO READ: Work-Life Balance: Which Countries Get It Right?
The unequal distribution of leisure
| wdt_ID | wdt_created_by | wdt_created_at | wdt_last_edited_by | wdt_last_edited_at | Group | Free-time position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 17/08/2026 12:16 PM | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 17/08/2026 12:16 PM | Full-time employed men | More leisure on average |
| 2 | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 17/08/2026 12:16 PM | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 17/08/2026 12:16 PM | Full-time employed women | Less leisure, more unpaid work |
| 3 | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 17/08/2026 12:16 PM | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 17/08/2026 12:16 PM | OECD average gender gap | ~45 minutes a day |
| 4 | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 17/08/2026 12:16 PM | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 17/08/2026 12:16 PM | Italy (widest gap) | ~1.5 hours a day |
The Netherlands and Norway are the only OECD countries in which employed women have more leisure time than their male counterparts.
Why women’s free time disappears into unpaid work
The crucial mechanism is the “second shift.”
Fewer hours of paid work for women do not translate into more leisure time because the time is absorbed by unpaid work such as childcare, cooking, and cleaning.
So even when women spend less time in the office, they do not end up with more time to themselves, because domestic and care work fills the gap.
Tellingly, in countries where women work much longer total hours than men, satisfaction with time use is lower for both genders, suggesting an unequal division of labor makes everyone less content.
ALSO READ: World Happiness Map: Where People Are Most Satisfied
ELI5
Free time is not shared equally.
Even when women do less paid work, they usually have less leisure time than men because they do far more unpaid work at home, such as childcare and cleaning.
Around the world, women do about three times as much of this unpaid work as men.
Sources
