Women will have less time to devote to leisure, which impacts their mental health

Adults immersed in the world of work, in addition to answering daily for their allotted work hours, must allocate time for household tasks such as cooking, cleaning or maintenance. In addition, there is care work for those with dependents, such as children, the elderly, or people with disabilities.

The remaining time of the day, after sleep, is considered “free time” and is devoted to leisure or other personal activities. The problem, as the United Nations has repeatedly pointed out, is that domestic and care work has been unevenly distributed, placing a greater burden on women.

Study published in Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health They analyzed this phenomenon under the concept of time poverty, which means not having time to devote to entertainment and personal activities.

To do this, they studied 1,408 wage earners between the ages of 16 and 64, 695 men and 713 women, with information collected by the Barcelona Health Survey in 2021. The threshold chosen for considering a person to be temporally poor was that the total Paid and unpaid work time (domestic and care work) 67.3 hours per week.

They found that women were more likely to have less time due to the additional burden of unpaid work. In both genders, their available time decreased as more children were born.

However, inequalities were not only evident in terms of limited time allocated to leisure and personal activities. The investigation concluded: “While chronological poverty among men was not associated with any health indicator, among women it was associated with poor mental health status, poor sleep quality, poor sleep quality and reduced leisure-time physical activity.”

Through this study, scientists ensure that lack of time is proven as a social determinant of gender inequality, which also affects women's health.

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