Press release 26/06/2017
One in four working men believes that it would be highly detrimental to their professional career to request paternity leave
This percentage is the highest in the last 6 years
25% if working men believe it would be highly detrimental to their professional career for them to request paternity leave, according to Eustat data. This percentage has increased in recent years, reaching its highest point in 2016, 10 points more than in 2010. Notwithstanding, just 8.4% of men believe that paternity could affect them slightly compared to 17.6% of working women, who believe that maternity could create promotion inequalities. The fear that requesting leave or reduced hours would affect career options was slightly greater amongst women than amongst men (36.1% and 33.9% respectively).
Generally speaking, one in three working people in the Basque Country stated having problems balancing work with caring for dependants (29.3%) and a similar percentage with looking after their minor children (30.4%). This high degree of difficulty is also perceived by 26.5% of working people when it involves balancing work with personal activities.
It should be pointed out that men experienced greater difficulty in balancing work with caring for young children, since 66.6% stated having a medium or high degree of difficulty as opposed to 57.3% of women.
Women who work outside the home and have children under the age of 15 dedicated 4.7 hours per day to their care, whilst working men dedicated just 3.3 hours per day. Slightly higher is the difference observed between working people who look after dependants, an activity to which women dedicate 2.7 hours per day compared to 1.1 for men.
In addition, just over half of working women dedicate 5 hours or more per day to looking after children (51.3%) and one in five to attending to dependants. In turn, and on the contrary, 39.5% working men collaborated with 2 hours or less looking after their children.
In comparison with data from 2010 it is apparent that the percentage of women who dedicated a large number of hours - 5 or more - to caring for their sons and daughters was maintained, whereas the percentage corresponding to men is increasing and reached its highest level in 2016 (23.1%).
The distribution of domestic tasks amongst working men and working women in the Basque Country is also imbalanced: nine out of ten men 91.8%- dedicate 2 hours or less to those tasks, whilst three out of ten women -27.6%- dedicate 3 hours or more.
This uneven distribution of functions means that a significant percentage of working women (12.3%) were very unsatisfied with the collaboration offered by their spouse or partner in carrying out domestic tasks. In contrast, a high number of working men are very satisfied with the participation of their partner (74.3%). Despite this, the percentage of men declaring themselves to be very satisfied with the time they spend on household tasks (46.8%) is greater than that for women (45.9%).
It is worth mentioning that working women express a greater satisfaction from looking after their children - 58.2% indicate a high satisfaction - and their dependents - 47.8% - ; for working men, these percentages drop to 49.9% and 40.4%, respectively.
38.5% of the working population has to prolong the working day
A relevant part of the working population has to dedicate more hours than those established or foreseen to their job: sometimes (20.6%) or almost always (17.9%). This prolongation in the working day affects men more than women, with 21.3% of working males having to prolong the day sometimes and 20.5% nearly always, whereas amongst working females these percentages suppose 19.8% and 15%, respectively.
Amongst the various methods that might facilitate the reconciliation of work, family and personal life, short-term leave is within reach of the large majority of the working population, followed by the possibility of requesting leave in the form of unpaid days off. Furthermore, approximately half the working population stated that they experienced little difficulty in obtaining extended leaves of absence or a reduction in working hours.
A flexible timetable for finishing work, another supplementary solution for improving reconciliation, was enjoyed by one in three people in work (36.6%). As regards working from home, 10.6% of people in work worked sporadically from home and 6.2% at least half of the time.
15% of the time it is working women who sporadically take care of young children during the working day, compared with 4% of working men
In households where both partners worked, looking after children outside the working hours of the father or mother corresponded in 97.8% of occasions to both of them; however, the father took responsibility in just 0.1% of these cases, whereas this figure rose to 1.3% for occasions when the mother took sole responsibility.
In these same households, the sporadic care of children when, during working hours, they have to be taken to the doctor, are ill or do not have school, corresponds to both parents on 58.8% of occasions, on 20% to unpaid family members and on 14.7% to the mother; only on 3.7% of occasions does the father take responsibility for their care.
Finally, in relation to work preferences, the working population opts for the condition of salaried worker (85%) against that of self-employed worker (15%), while this preference is more balanced between large companies (59.3%) and small companies (40.7%) and between the public sector (57.5%) and the private sector (42.5%).
For further information:
Eustat - Euskal Estatistika Erakundea / Basque Statistics Institute
C/ Donostia-San Sebastián, 1 01010 Vitoria-Gasteiz
Press Service: servicioprensa@eustat.es Tel: 945 01 75 62