According to the results of my latest research “Women and Men, Today. Equality or inequality?”, 63% of couples in which a woman lives with a man in Spain are unbalanced when it comes to carrying out housework and caring for and educating their sons or daughters, if they have them. The good news is that the evolution is favorable compared to the first measurement we made in 2015, in which 70% of women were in this situation.
This means that, today in Spain, almost 5.6 million women carry their own “Concrete Slab”.
These women affirm that they are supporting more than double the family burdens than them, both in housework and in raising children, if they have sons or daughters (they affirm that they are carrying out, on average, 69% of the household tasks and also 69% of the care and education of the children).
But this unbalanced distribution between women and men in carrying out unpaid family work becomes worse if we also take into account the type of tasks in which each member of the couple is most involved. Since, in all tasks, both at home and parenting, that require greater “mental effort” (organizing the house, organizing the children’s lives, taking them to the doctor, attending school meetings…) women are taking charge 70% of the time, or more. This is the famous “mental load” referred to by the feminist movement.