Swedish Men About the House Leave Portuguese Standing

Europe's southern fringe is still the home of machismo, with Portuguese men being the least likely to do any housework, according to a study released yesterday.

At the top of the household layabouts' ranking, 61% of Portuguese men, 57% of Greek men and 47% of Spanish men told researchers they rarely, or never, used an iron or wielded a dustpan and brush.

Italian results were not included in the study analysis as researchers there had not delivered their findings in time, but their Spanish counterparts said they assumed Italians would fare just as badly. The findings were drawn from the latest European Social Survey, according to La Vanguardia newspaper.

British men came towards the middle of the Europe-wide list, with 22% admitting they rarely lifted a finger at home. They were shamed by their Swedish counterparts, with only 8% saying they did nothing, or nearly nothing, at home.

The study also found a huge discrepancy between the number of men who thought they should be sharing housework equally and the number who actually did so, across all the countries.

More than three-quarters of Spanish and Portuguese men, for example, thought they ought to be doing half the housework, but at least a quarter of those men admitted doing nothing. Only 10% of British men thought there was no need to share housework equally, but 20% said they hardly did anything at home.

Spain's socialist government is aware of the problem. Last year it passed a law that obliges men who marry in civil ceremonies to pledge to "share domestic responsibilities and the care and attention" of children and elderly family members.

"The idea of equality within marriage always stumbles over the problem of work in the house and caring for dependent people," Margarita Uría, a senator who backed the law, said.

Spanish women spend, on average, five times longer on housework than their husbands. Even where both have jobs outside the home, Spanish women still do three times as much work in the house.

A study published last year showed that, if you combined their hours at the office with the work they did at home, Spanish women worked an average of an hour a day more than their men.

The sociologist who presented the study, María Angeles Durán, said young Spanish women had opted for the easiest "solution" to the problem of squeezing children into their busy timetable.

"Given that they take up so much time, we have decided not to have them," she said, explaining the country's low birth-rate.

The survey also revealed that southern Europeans and people from former communist countries were the least interested in politics.