The REAL brain drain: How exhausting housework is to blame for women earning less

As she slaves over a hot stove, many a woman is also seeing her wealth boil away.

And when she does the washing up, her money is effectively draining down the plughole.

Because the reason women earn less than men is simple - they do more housework, academics claimed yesterday.

Most observers, including the Government, think the 18 per cent difference in earnings between the sexes is mainly caused by women having children and then choosing to spend more time than men in their upbringing.

But the real reason is that women do the harder work - namely cooking, laundry and shopping - in a household, according to the Institute for Social and Economic Research.

As a result, they get more tired than men, who tend to confine themselves to gardening and repairs at weekends.

In addition, chores tackled by women - such as cooking meals - usually have to be done at a set time, just before or just after normal office hours.

This means they can work only specific hours, so they are unable to be in the office at vital times.

"It is likely that the relative inflexibility of housework for women in couples reduces their availability in the labour market," said the study.

The findings are based on the British Household Panel Study, which has followed the same 5,000 families for more than 15 years. The researchers are the first to claim that the tendency of women to carry a greater burden of the domestic chores is a major reason for the gender pay gap.

While men do only four or five hours of household work a week, single women put seven hours into cleaning and maintaining the home, the study said.

And wives and live-in girlfriends do more than 12 hours of domestic work every week, with destructive results for their careers.

The result is that those who cut back their housework to the amount done by men would increase their wages by 1 per cent and reduce the overall gender difference in earnings.

The researchers noted that housework has no effect on the careers or earnings of single people. Only when they form couples do women start to carry a bigger burden.

They added that people who spend more time at home develop fewer working skills and so end up in lower-paid jobs than others.

However, whether a couple had children made little difference to the effect of housework on wages.