Gender equality, in Italy, often enters through the front door and then stops in front of the washing machine. At work we talk about skills, career, economic autonomy, female talent, leadership, empowerment and the whole lexical buffet set out for serious occasions. Then you come home and someone has to figure out what’s missing in the fridge, start a washing machine, book a visit, remember the teacher’s birthday present, change the sheets, fix dinner, respond to the school chat, check if there’s still detergent, bread, patience and the will to live.
Guess who, still too often, keeps the switchboard up.
The data from Istat’s 2026 annual report have the advantage of removing the cellophane from nice phrases. In 2023, women aged 25 and over dedicate 4 hours and 44 minutes a day to family work. Men 2 hours and 6 minutes. The gap is 2 hours and 38 minutes per day. Twenty years ago it was even wider, exceeding three and a half hours. So yes, something has moved. But with that slowness typical of things that everyone says they want to change and then, coincidentally, always remain on the same kitchen shelf. Compared to 2003, women’s time dedicated to family work decreased by 40 minutes; the men’s one increased by 19 minutes. Translated: the women dropped a piece of the load, the men picked up a smaller piece. What a revolution, call it fireworks.
The second round still has the apron
The formula “family work” seems harmless. Almost tender. It makes you think of something warm, domestic, tidy. Instead inside there are domestic work, care, purchases of goods and services. In simple words: everything that allows a house not to turn into a campsite with overdue bills.
The most convenient part of the system is this: if that job is done well, it disappears. No one notices the clean bathroom, the dinner ready, the children accompanied, the shopping done, the grandmother looked after, the laundry folded, the family life that does not derail. It becomes air. As soon as he is missing, however, everyone realizes that they were breathing thanks to someone.
Even in couples where both work, the scene remains quite embarrassing. Among employed partners between 25 and 64 years old, in 2023 men dedicate 1 hour and 48 minutes a day to family work, women 4 hours and 10 minutes. So the old alibi “eh, but he works” here wobbles like an Ikea chair assembled with too much self-esteem. She works too. Then he comes back and starts again.
Of course, total work in employed couples has gotten a little closer. In 2003, men spent 7 hours and 56 minutes per day between paid work and family work, while women spent 9 hours and 9 minutes. In 2023 men go up to 8 hours and 3 minutes, women go down to 8 hours and 42 minutes. Better than before, of course. But “better than before” does not mean “good”. It’s one of those phrases that resemble when the train arrives only thirty minutes late and someone even demands applause.
In 2023, for the first time, paid work becomes the predominant component of overall female work. This is an important step. It means that employed women are shifting their time, energy, identity and effort to paid work too. However, the traditional structure of the division of roles in dual-income couples has not changed substantially. The progress is wonderful, but then there is always someone who has to hang out the socks.
The house is not neutral
Istat uses a very useful indicator, the family work asymmetry index. It measures how much of the couple’s total family work is done by women: 50 indicates equality, 100 means all about women, 0 all about men. In 2023, in employed couples between 25 and 64 years old, women still carry out 68.9% of the total family work. In 2003 they were at 75.4%. We went from “I do almost everything” to “I still do a lot”. A great classic of Italian modernity: changing enough to be able to tell oneself better, too little to really become one.
The most resistant part is the housework. Childcare is shared a little more, probably because being present fathers has become at least socially presentable. The washing machine, however, has less narrative appeal. No one posts an emotional post saying, “Today I cleaned the dryer filter and felt fatherhood run through my chest.” It’s a shame, because equality lives there much more than in beautiful phrases about the family.
The level of education changes something. In couples in which the woman has a degree, the asymmetry drops to 66%. Where the woman has at most a middle school diploma, it exceeds 71%. So yes, studying also helps to question certain scripts. But 66% remains very far from 50. The qualification opens windows, then the dust settles on the furniture anyway.
And then there is geography, this old Italian passion for gaps that change emphasis, but not substance. The asymmetry is more limited in the North, with 66.6%, and in the Centre, with 68.1%. In the South it rises to 76.2%. In domestic work the distance becomes even more brutal: 69.9% in the North, 70.7% in the Center, 82.6% in the South. In child care, however, the values tend to converge around 64%. The message is quite clear: the child can also be taken to the park, washing the bathroom remains less poetic.
Stereotypes have the keys to the house
The most annoying thing is that time is not distributed only according to working hours, salaries or available services. It is also distributed based on ideas. The old ones, the ones chewed slowly, said lightly, the ones that no one calls patriarchy anymore because it looks bad at dinner.
When in an employed couple it is thought that it is above all the man who has to provide for the economic needs of the family, the asymmetry of family work increases. If he thinks so, it goes up by 3.4 percentage points. If she thinks so, she goes up 5.3 points. When men are thought to be less suited to domestic activities, the asymmetry increases by 6.2 points if the man thinks so and by 5.3 points if the woman thinks so. Here it is, the trap set with a good tablecloth and Sunday cutlery: the stereotype works even when you internalize it. In fact, it works better.
“Men don’t see certain things.” “I’ll do it first.” “If I wait for him, goodnight.” “It helps me a lot.” It helps. That verb should be deleted from any discussion on household management. Because if a man “helps” at home, it means that the house still remains, symbolically, the responsibility of women. He intervenes. She presides. He lends a hand. She keeps the register. He sets the table. She knows where the tablecloths are, the medicines, the change of season, the form for the trip, the paediatrician’s number, the password for the electronic register, the waste bag and the desire to scream.
This is not a question of character. It is not about the “precise”, “anxious” woman, “who wants to control everything”. This is a structure. And like all successful structures, it feigns individual character so as not to be dismantled.
The time that is missing becomes a career that slows down
The Report says it in a very sober way: the time dedicated to family responsibilities continues to represent a structural factor of differentiation in the paths, professional opportunities and availability of free time of men and women. If a woman does many more hours of free work inside the home, she arrives at paid work with less margin, less energy, less availability, less time to train, less possibility of holding back, less freedom to say “yes” to a professional opportunity without having to first set aside half a life.
Then of course, we can continue to tell ourselves that women choose. They choose part-time, they choose to slow down, they choose to be more present, they choose to pass up a promotion, they choose not to apply for a heavier role. Some really do it, with freedom and desire. Many others choose inside a corridor so narrow that more than a choice it seems like a maneuver to get out of a double-row parking space.
“Time poverty” serves precisely to name this thing here. It’s not just about having a full agenda. It’s living with the feeling that there’s never enough time because a huge part of the day is taken up by what needs to be done and that someone takes for granted. In 2023, 49.2% of people aged 15 and over say they have felt troubled due to lack of time. At 10.6%, over 4 million and 600 thousand people, it always happens; at 38.6% it happens sometimes. The perception is more frequent among women already at a young age and remains throughout life. The difficulties are strongest between the ages of 25 and 44, i.e. the age in which work, children, couple, family of origin, home, ambitions and various crises all present themselves together like relatives at Christmas.
The highest levels are recorded among female workers with a degree: among employed women aged 25-44, more than one in four, 26.1%, declares this perception, compared to 21.8% of employed women with at most a middle school diploma. Here too, more education can mean more possibilities, more expectations, more investment in work, more desire not to be reduced to the ordinary management of the house. But then the house knocks. And it often still has the voice of your mother, your grandmother, your neighbor, your colleague, that part of you that learned too early to feel guilty if you leave something out of place.
Mothers run more
Motherhood increases anxiety. Among employed women with cohabiting children, 26.4% declare that they always feel anxious due to lack of time. Among employed women without cohabiting children the share drops to 19.5%. In the 25-44 age group, the figure rises to 28% among employed mothers with cohabiting children, compared to 20.5% of employed mothers without cohabiting children. The difference is all there: not in the rhetoric of the “gift”, not in the sugary phrases about the mother who always makes it, not in the holy card of the multitasking woman. It’s time. Time is running out. Weather that becomes a short blanket even if it’s forty degrees outside.
And naturally this poverty of time also affects life satisfaction. Among those who always feel troubled, the share of very satisfied people stops at 28.9%. Among those who never experience this sensation it reaches 58.1%. So no, it’s not just “stress”. It’s not just “you need to organize yourself better”. It’s not just “eh, adult life”. It’s well-being that shrinks. It is mental space that is consumed. It’s the chance to be a whole person, not a service station with legs.
The answers indicated by the Report are what you expect: work-life balance, accessible care services, greater flexibility, more efficient organisations. Inside, however, there is a very material thing: giving back time. Because time is not a private detail. It is a political, economic and social resource. And when it’s always missing from the same people, the problem isn’t the agenda. It’s the system.
Domestic equality, in Italy, cannot be measured with the phrases said on March 8, with the tender posts about the “rock” partner, with the father who once takes his son to the pediatrician and is welcomed like a war veteran. It is measured in hours, minutes, washing machines, shifts, missed promotions, lost sleep, invented dinners, messages in the school chat, holidays used to cover gaps in care.
As long as a woman continues to do 4 hours and 44 minutes of family work a day and a man 2 hours and 6 minutes, equality will remain a nice word said in the living room. With someone, usually her, who clears away in the meantime.
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