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Swedish dads working less as mums work more

The Local Sweden
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Swedish dads working less as mums work more

Fathers of young children in Sweden are spending fewer hours at work, while women with children are working more than ever, a new overview of statistics reveals.

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The study looked at workings hours from 1987 through 2011.

Last year, workers with children younger than seven worked three hours less on average than colleagues who had no children living at home.

Throughout the entire period, women in Sweden have been more likely to work less when they have children at home compared both to women without children and to their male colleagues who also have children.

But the gap between working mum and working das is now getting smaller, the report found.

“Men with children at home have scaled back their working hours over the entire 25-year period. That development was very clear in the past decade,” Statistics Sweden summarized in its report.

More than two decades ago, working dads spent almost two days more per week at work than female colleagues with young children.

Now the difference 10 hours.

“The difference is still big but men and women are getting closer to one another when it comes to working hours,” Statistics Sweden said in a statement.

In fact, in the late 1980s through to the mid-2000s, fathers worked one to two hours more per week than their male colleagues who didn't have children.

By 2006, they had scaled back their working hours so they worked less than employees without children at home.

The report also found that women are spending more time at work whether or not they have children, but the trend is the most clear for women with young children.

Workers without children have not changed their working hours much in the 25-year period covered by the study.

In that category, men still work more than women.

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