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London - The news will come as a major blow to all those “new men” who insist they do their fair share around the home.

Because, as women have long suspected, females still spend more time cooking and cleaning than their other halves.

A woman dedicates 85 minutes a day to household chores, while men spend 57 minutes a day on housework, a survey has found.

Over a year a woman can expect to lose three weeks to housework, while their partners dedicate only a fortnight to domesticities.

Once children are introduced into the relationship mothers take on even more of the responsibility, spending 16 and a half hours a week looking after the family and home, compared to the 11.5 hours put in by fathers.

And, while more men are cooking meals, picking up a hoover and dusting than ever before, they still put in the most time doing stereotypically male duties, with gardening, cleaning the car and taking out the bins top of their chore lists.

More than 2,000 couples were quizzed for the ‘who does what?’ survey, commissioned by insurance firm Aviva.

Many of those questioned held down a full-time or part-time paid job as well as looking after their families.

It revealed that women spend by far the most time – 105 minutes per week – cooking, followed by 77 minutes washing and ironing and 68 minutes tidying up.

By comparison their spouse dedicated just 66 minutes to cooking, half an hour to washing and ironing and just 36 minutes to general tidying.

However, men do spend around 10 minutes more than their wives cleaning the car and doing the gardening.

Louise Colley, head of protection for Aviva, said: 'Balancing family life against work pressures is a constant challenge, particularly when children are involved, so it’s important that couples can share the load where possible.

'It’s perhaps inevitable that one person will tend to pick up certain domestic duties, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the other partner is taking on different tasks.

'Life is a constant balancing act, particularly for parents who often have to build their own schedules around other people’s timetables - work, school and childcare for example. It’s then easy to see how individuals can feel stressed as they try to do it all.

'There’s no easy answer, but by communicating and making sure the burden is split as fairly and evenly as possible - both inside and outside the home - this could help to ease the pressure all round.'

Although expectations of family roles are more fluid than they have ever been in Britain, the traditional perceptions of men as breadwinners and women as home makers still prevail.

A poll conducted last year found that 32 percent of young people agreed that it was the role of women in society to be good wives and mothers. - Daily Mail

MINUTES SPENT ON CHORES FOR THE SEXES

Washing up - 51 women 37 men

Cleaning the car - 13 women 23 men

Vacume cleaning - 40 women 23 men

Washing and ironing - 77 women 30 men

Cleaning bathroom - 36 women 20 men

Cleaning kitchen - 51 women 26 men

Dusting - 30 women 19 men

Cooking - 105 women 66 men

Grocery shopping - 60 women 54 men

Making beds - 29 women 20 men

Gardening - 36 women 46 men

General tidying - 68 women 36 men

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