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As The Number Of Female Breadwinners Grows, Women Are Still Stuck With The Housework

While women are increasingly becoming the breadwinners of their families, they’re not doing any less of the housework.

On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual American Time Use survey, a peek into how Americans divvy up the 168 precious hours they have in every week. And while new studies show that four in ten women in the U.S. are the main person responsible for bringing home the bacon, the survey shows that in 2012 they were also still responsible for cooking it, too:

On an average day, 82 percent of women and 65 percent of men spent some time doing household activities such as housework, cooking, lawn care, or financial and other household management.

On the days they did household activities, women spent an average of 2.6 hours on such activities, while men spent 2.0 hours.

On an average day, 20 percent of men did housework — such as cleaning or doing laundry — compared with 48 percent of women. Thirty-nine percent of men did food preparation or cleanup, compared with 65 percent of women.

These numbers are statistically identical to the results of last year’s survey, save for the fact that men worked for pay on average 55 minutes more than women in 2012, as compared to 47 minutes more in 2011. Indeed, among the full-time workforce, men worked an average of 8.5 hours a week compared with women’s 7.9 hours.

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Such statistics lend credence to the idea that even the most financially successful women are stuck with a “second shift” when they get home from work. Adding insult to injury, women are also still facing a pay gap compared to their male colleagues, meaning that they’re doing the same work, getting paid less to do it, and are still expected — even by their partners — to fulfill the gender stereotyped role of woman-as-caregiver/housekeeper/cook.