This is one of the conclusions of a study released by CGTP, the last of a set that the Commission for Equality has been disseminating on the current situation of women at work, in the context of the preparation of Equality Week that the centre promotes between 8 and 12 March.

According to the analysis, based on data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) and Eurostat, 78 percent of working women do at least one hour of domestic work per day, while only 19 percent of men do it. "Although there are positive signs about the participation of men in terms of sharing responsibilities in family life, there is still a great distance between a balanced sharing of responsibilities and everyday realities", says the study.

According to the document, almost 40 percent of women have already interrupted their careers to take care of children, while only 8 percent of men did. About 17 percent of women are informal caregivers, giving up, totally or partially, on a temporary or permanent basis, their full involvement in paid work to assist spouses, parents, children, or other family members in conditions of fragility or dependency. And only 9 percent of men are informal caregivers. "In this context, the effects already caused by the pandemic and the widespread use of telework for a large number of women, further deepened the difficulties that already exist in the reconciliation between work and family and personal life", considered the CGTP.

According to the study, in the first wave of the pandemic crisis, coinciding with the 2nd quarter of 2020, the proportion of the employed population that always or almost always worked at home, in teleworking, reached 25.2 percent in women and 21.1 percent in men. Citing the results of the national survey conducted in 2020 by INE, the document says that the existence of children leads to a more unfavorable perception as to the existence of conditions necessary for teleworking in terms of family situation and time management, particularly among women. "On the other hand, it was also women who most resorted to extraordinary support for the family, with more than 80% of the beneficiaries of this support being women, an indicator that clearly illustrates the asymmetries that continue to mark the provision of care within the family. familiar ", he says.

Inequalities regarding women persist despite Portugal being one of the European countries with the highest female participation rate in the labor market, given that the female activity rate is 73 percent, above the European average, which is 68 percent and close to the male activity rate, which is 78 percent. Portugal combines a high female activity rate with a low proportion of women employed on a part-time basis, as only 11 percent of women do so, compared to the more than 31 percent recorded in the European Union average.

At the same time, women represent around 50% of employment in Portugal, while at European level the rate of feminization of employment is 46 percent. The CGTP Commission for Equality considered that "the widespread extension and the constant irregularity of working hours and times are clearly incompatible with the need to reconcile work and family life on a daily basis".

According to the study, Portugal is the fourth country in the European Union where it usually works more hours per week full time: 40 hours per week, on average, in all sectors, but in agriculture, animal production, hunting, forestry and fishing. at 42 hours a week. More than 50 percent of all workers, including part-time workers, work on average between 36 and 40 hours and 18 percent more than 40 hours.

More than 1.7 million employees work in shifts, at night, on Saturday or Sunday or in a combination of these types of hours, 860 thousand of whom are women, 49% of the total. Of the total number of working women, 41.5% are covered by this type of schedule.

More than 650 thousand women work on Saturday, about 430 thousand on Sunday, 393 thousand at night, 393 thousand by shift and 132 thousand at night. The CGTP Commission for Equality defended the need for effective and efficient measures to be taken to reconcile work with personal and family life for workers and guarantee the equality of women.