Indicator 5.4.1 Proportion of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work, by sex, age and location

Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Target 5.4: Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate

Indicator 5.4.1: Proportion of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work, by sex, age and location

This indicator is defined as the proportion of time spent in a day on unpaid domestic and care work by men and women. Unpaid domestic and care work refers to activities related to the provision of services for own final use by household members, or by family members living in other households. These activities are listed in ICATUS 2016 under the major divisions “3. Unpaid domestic services for household and family members” and “4. Unpaid caregiving services for household and family members”.

The average time spent on an activity is a daily average based on a seven day week and the proportion of day is based on a 24 hour day.

Excludes territories and institutionalized population.

Given that the non-binary population is small, data aggregation to a two-category gender variable is sometimes necessary to protect the confidentiality of responses provided. In these cases, individuals in the category “non-binary persons” are distributed into the other two gender categories and are denoted by the “+” symbol.

The sex variable in the 2015 Time Use Survey and the two-category gender variable in the 2022 Time Use Survey are included together in this indicator. Although sex and gender refer to two different concepts, the introduction of gender is not expected to have a significant impact on data analysis and historical comparability, given the small size of the transgender and non-binary populations. For additional information on changes of concepts over time, please consult the Age, Sex at Birth and Gender Reference Guide.

The 2022 Time Use Survey offered both telephone and Internet modes of data collection in recognition of the need to adapt to the changing use of technology and the ever-present demands on Canadians’ time. Any significant change in survey methodology can affect the comparability of the data over time. It is impossible to determine with certainty whether, and to what extent, differences in a variable are attributable to an actual change in the population or to changes in the survey methodology. However, there are reasons to believe that the use of an electronic questionnaire might have an impact on the estimations. As a result, trend analysis on unpaid work and care should be done with caution and this visualization product does not provide a comparison between years for disaggregated data.

Data were readily available to report on this indicator as specified by the metadata. Please refer to the sources to access additional information on the metadata or source.

Caution should be exercised when interpreting the progress of this indicator as the progress solely measures the trend in the ratio of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work by men and women. A reduction in the total time spent on domestic and care work from all genders may not be desired and may indicate growing neglect rather than gender equality.

Certain data transformations have been applied to better measure progress, accounting for deviations from the target in both directions. For more information, please refer to the progress measurement methodology documentation.