(ANSA) - Italian women spend more of their time doing housework and looking after children than any of their European peers, according to a new survey by national statistics bureau Istat.
Confirming suspicions that Italian housewives have had for some time, Istat also found that Italian men are the least active in the same fields when compared to their counterparts in other big European nations.
The survey showed that all over the continent women still spend more time looking after the home than men. But Italian women, putting in an average of five hours 20 minutes a day, were the busiest.
At the other end of the scale, the average Swedish woman dedicates only three hours 42 minutes to chores.
It was the same situation when only working women were considered. In Italy they still put in three hours 51 minutes, 40 minutes more than their German peers and half an hour more than Finns.
Italian men spend one hour 35 minutes on their household duties, a whole hour less than Bulgarians, Hungarians and Swedes. But, Istat noted, Italian men top the table when it comes to time dedicated to paid work.
Despite their apparent passion for work, they still came out with more free time (over five hours a day) than other European males. The nation's women, on the other hand, had less than all their counterparts elsewhere in Europe.
Istat's survey - which involved 11 countries - was aimed primarily at investigating how Europeans divide up their time. The figures tended to indicate that Italians sleep less than their fellow Europeans but they spend more time over meals and more taking care of themselves and their appearance.
