It won’t come as a surprise to the women picking clothes up off the floor, loading the dishwasher and stirring dinner on the stove.
Men, according to official figures, get 40 minutes more than they do every day to put their feet up and relax.
Across the UK, men apparently while away six hours and nine minutes a day on leisure activities. Women, on the other hand, wangle a mere five hours and 29 minutes to themselves, the Office for National Statistics found.
Men prefer to spend their spare time on video games and sports while women are more likely to catch up with friends and family
And when it comes to how we choose to enjoy that leisure time, there are marked differences between the sexes.
While many men prefer to play sport or computer games, women are more likely to spend their precious free time catching up with friends and family.
Those wives and girlfriends who complain the men in their lives don’t take on a fair share of household chores may have a point. The ONS report suggests women have less leisure time on their hands because they carry out more unpaid work, such as childcare and cleaning the house.
Professor Margaret Hogg, of Lancaster University Management School said: ‘There are lots of men who help now, but the prime responsibility for family life, for knowing what’s for dinner and what’s on the shopping list, still lies with women.’
In a sign of our sedentary lifestyles, both men and women spent by far the majority of their time outside work ‘consuming mass media’ – that is watching TV or listening to music.
Men, however, still manage to fit in an extra two hours a week sitting in front of the box.
Both men and women spend the majority of their time outside work ‘consuming mass media’
Leisure activities included in the study included socialising, resting, sports and eating out, but did not count time spent sleeping and on personal care. Women in the North West suffer from the biggest gender leisure gap, where men spend an average of seven hours a week more enjoying themselves.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the country where men do not have more free time than women.
But they enjoy less leisure time –four hours and 22 minutes per day – than any other UK region.
On average, British men spent two hours a week longer than women enjoying hobbies such as sport and computer games – four-and-a-half hours in total versus two-and-a half hours for women. The research found women socialised for 75 minutes more than men a week on average, at four hours and 19 minutes compared with a little over three hours for men.
Men and women’s lifestyles do converge when it comes to resting and eating out, with both spending roughly the same amount of time on these activities.
The ONS study analysed 2015 data from the UK Harmonised European Time Use Survey.