It's true: women do work longer hours than their men

Now research has proved them right – but only just.

Women apparently work a grand total of ten minutes more each day, when the hours of labour inside and outside the home are added up.

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In total, they toil for 428 minutes, compared to 418 minutes for men.

At the office they do an average of 170 paid minutes, or roughly three hours.

And in the home they perform an average of 250 minutes of unpaid labour, or around four hours.

In contrast, men do 280 minutes of paid work, or four-and-a-half hours, and just over two hours, or 130 minutes, of unpaid work.

The results, according to researchers actually show that the overall workload is quite evenly shared between the sexes – though still along very traditional lines.

The hours time a woman spends working in the home roughly equate to the hours men do in the office, and vice-versa.

The survey, carried out by economists from America's National Bureau of Economic Research, looked at the working patterns of men and women aged 20-74 in 25 countries.

The respondents were both employed and unemployed.

One of the researchers, Philippe Wiel from the Universite Libre in Brussels, said the findings would shock many women – who generally assume they spend many more hours working.

"This has been an argument in the gender war, that women have this double burden hitting them," he said.

"But we do not find evidence in rich northern countries that this is the case."

Although the women surveyed felt they had less spare time than men, Mr Wiel said that may be down to the fact that they sleep more.

He said: "The time spent not working is identical for men and women. But how this time is used differs.

"It turns out that women spend more time sleeping than men do. The extra time that women spend sleeping, men usually spend watching TV, so that may explain the perception that women have less free time."

The findings shows that overall Americans work the hardest – with men working 476 minutes a day and women 472.

The country with the biggest gender gap is Italy, where women do three times as much housework as men.

Dutch, American, Swedish and Norwegian men all work slightly longer than women, whereas women do slightly more in Belgium, Denmark and France as well as Britain.

But some refused to accept the results yesterday.

Anna Thorburn from Global Women's Strike, a body campaigning for greater recognition of the work done by women, said the research does not recognise factors such as "emotional housework". She said: "It's the organising and planning and maintaining of relationships that women do. "When men stop working they switch off. Women are constantly on the go, juggling things to keep things going."

Her view is backed up by past surveys which show that women do £17,400 worth of unpaid household chores a year.

Although still doing more than their fair share of housework, women are now