For several years now we have been talking about Equal Pay Day, the day when women symbolically start working without earning more, given the difference in wages with their colleagues. This is a “mobile” day, it changes every year, as does the gender pay gap, and it has also been recognized by the European Union to raise awareness on this issue. Now there are those who argue that Equal Domestic Work Day, a day when women must stop doing housework, should also be introduced to make up for the gender gap in care work, symbolically or not.

“It’s not that men don’t have time to cook or clean,” writes reporter Sarah Greene Carmichael on bloomberg“The average man has 40 minutes more free time every day than the average woman. Among married parents, who both work full-time, where leisure time is scarce and the break between housework is reduced to about 30 minutes, husbands spend even more free time. than their wives: 44 minutes more every day.” In Italy, the situation is even more discouraging: according to a report Care work and care jobs for a decent work future The ILO takes over 74% of unpaid care work. In particular, Italian women act 5 hours and 5 minutes of unpaid help and care per day, while men only one hour and 48 minutes. This is a significant gap, placing Italy in fifth place on the European continent (after Albania, Armenia, Portugal and Turkey), while in some neighboring countries the share of care work performed by women is more than 10 percentage points lower (France 61 ). % and Germany 62%).

We know things have worsened with the pandemic, but more recent data would be needed given that the ILO report dates back to 2020 and many dynamics have changed. It is for this reason that the introduction of an Equal Housework Day would be important: it would serve to highlight a problem that often goes unnoticed even today and has implications for women’s careers as well as their quality of life. What would happen if all women suddenly stopped doing housework, taking care of the house, children and the elderly? In the United States, he points out bloomberg, this day was supposed to be August 29, in Italy, according to available statistics, May 9. This means that we may stop caring about care work now or, more likely, continue to talk about the problem, even more aware of its specific impact.