Men Have More Free Time and Earn More

Men enjoy 30 minutes per day more leisure time than women, according to a report released by the German Federal Statistics Office. While men have 6 hours and 11 minutes a day to themselves, women make do with 5 hours and 43 minutes. There's also a major gender divide in the way they spend it: Women tend to spend their free time socializing; Men prefer to read newspapers or watch television. The main reason women are busier is that they still take on the bulk of the burden of cooking, cleaning and childcare, the report said. Women also continue to earn less in full-time jobs than their male counterparts. In 2003, female staff in industry, manufacturing, trade, credit and insurance sectors earned an average of €2,602 ($3,159), some 30 percent less than their male colleagues. The discrepancy is less pronounced in the eastern German states, where better childcare facilities mean women are less likely to take time off. The east-west gap in salaries is less extreme in the case of casual workers: with an average of €1,885 a month, women workers in western Germany earned almost 25 percent less then men, whereas in eastern Germany salaries of casual women workers were just 22 percent below those of their male counterparts.