Men vs Women Survey

Forget the nation of nineties men. We're still a country where men deal with the car and DIY and women manage the housework. The latest Property Pulse survey confirms that traditional gender roles in the home are as strong as ever in Britain today. They asked households, where men and women live together, who did what around the home and found out that the chores traditionally associated with women are still largely carried out by them:

73 per cent iron;

60 per cent clean;

56 per cent cook;

55 per cent hoover;

…and the chores traditionally carried out by men are still mostly carried out by them:

70 per cent perform any DIY tasks;

70 per cent wash the car;

66 per cent mow the lawn.

Who does each of the following in your household?

Man Woman Tasks shared equally

Cooking 13 56 31

Ironing 9 73 18

Hoovering 13 55 31

Cleaning 8 60 32

Shopping 11 47 42

DIY 70 12 18

Washing the car 70 12 18

Mowing the lawn 66 17 16

A problem shared…?

The only chore that comes anywhere near being carried out equally by both sexes is the shopping. Forty-two per cent of households say that this necessary evil is shared between the sexes. But that still leaves 47 per cent of women doing the shop single-handedly compared with the 11 per cent of men who are prepared to regularly enter the world of baked beans, trolley mayhem and conveyor belt nightmares on their own.

The north/south divide?

Property Pulse shows that traditional roles seem to be more prevalent in the north of the country. For instance, an overwhelming eight out of ten women in the north do the ironing on a regular basis compared with six out of ten female Londoners. It's a similar story as far as the shopping is concerned - 61 per cent of northern women do the shopping compared to 41 per cent of their London counterparts.

At the male end of the spectrum, 77 per cent of north western men carry out any DIY in the home compared with 66 per cent of their London counterparts. Also, 74 per cent of north westerners mow the lawn on a regular basis compared with only 59 per cent of men in the south west.

Other interesting facts include….

a quarter of East Anglian males say they cook on a regular basis compared to a national average of 13 per cent;

17 per cent of men in the East Midlands iron on a regular basis compared with a national average of 9 per cent;

only 7 per cent of south western males shop regularly compared with a national average of 11 per cent;

82 per cent of men from the East Midlands wash the car on a regular basis compared with a national average of 70 per cent;

65 per cent of northern women do most of the hoovering compared with 41 per cent of Welsh women and a national average of 55 per cent.