The unfair burden of care work shouldered by women is having significant negative consequences on the campaign for gender equality, a conference has been told.
Latest official statistics indicate that women spend five times more on caring and household work during the week compared with men. Women also have less leisure time on average than men at weekends.
The National Women's Council of Ireland yesterday held a forum aimed at opening up the debate on the impact of care work on women's lives.
Council director Joanna McMinn said the lack of equality was affecting women's choices regarding employment and their participation in political and civic life. Often, the pressure of gender roles on men and women tended to undermine their wish to share care and household work.
"Regardless of the current economic situation, gender equality requires a fair distribution of all forms of work, paid and unpaid, private and public, between women and men," she said.
"Gender equality is a human right, established by law and EU convention, and not a response to labour market needs. The sharing of work in the home is part of that right and underpins women's capacity to have a personal and public life."
Ms McMinn said history had demonstrated that women were among the first groups to leave formal employment in an economic slowdown, leaving them particularly vulnerable.
Prof Kathleen Lynch, UCD chair of equality studies, said the inequality in care work faced by women had a profound effect on their financial status.
"Most care labour is unpaid, so women suffer a direct material loss in both the short-term, through lack of salary, and long- term, through a lack of pension cover. The doing of care work leaves others, mostly men, free to advance their material and social status and enjoy more leisure."
She said the rich and powerful, whom she described as "care commanders", could claim immunity from care responsibilities, whereas women were the "foot soldiers" of care work and society assumed this role came naturally to them.
Prof Lynch said modern business culture, for example, ignored the fact that people may have caring roles, with early morning business meetings becoming normal practice and the preference for the "zero-load worker" with no caring responsibilities.
The women's council said the discussion on sharing care work was taking place in other countries such as Spain. There the government recently introduced a law obliging men who marry in civil ceremonies to pledge to share domestic responsibilities and the care of children and older family members.
In the US there are also signs of a shift towards more sharing of care work. Research suggests younger fathers are spending more time with their children than older fathers do.