Work Rich, Time Poor? Time-Use of Women and Men in Ireland

TIME-USE OF WOMEN AND MEN IN IRELAND

Table 3: Average Time (hours:minutes) Spent on Main Activities, Weekdays
and Weekends

Source: Irish National Time-Use Survey, 2005.

Note: Where multiple activities are recorded for one time slot we apply the priority
setting outlined in the text to decide which activity is the main activity. Note that these
figures are not decimals but hours and minutes.

at the weekends: men on average have almost 1¹∕₂ hours more leisure time
than women. On weekend days women and men spend a similar time sleeping,
both sleeping more than on weekdays.

III ARE PEOPLE IN IRELAND TIME POOR? EVIDENCE FROM TIME-
USE DIARIES

The central idea of the debates on work and leisure is that individuals
have an increasing number of calls on their time and have little ‘free’ time. A
key question then becomes how to measure ‘time poverty’ or ‘time squeeze’. In
the literature these issues have been conceptualised and measured in a range
of ways. As with the measurement of poverty there is no one perfect way of
capturing this concept, so we discuss a number of different definitions and
measures.

The first issue is how to define ‘committed’ and ‘free’ time. Our preferred
measure of committed time includes time spent on paid work, study, unpaid
work (caring and housework) and time spent on travel. Some measures of
committed time exclude travel, while others allocate travel depending on its
purpose. We have included travel with committed time because the majority of
time spent on travel is linked to employment, especially on weekdays.¹² Our

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