In countries with strict gender roles, women’s total work hours tend to increase as they perform more paid labour outside the home. In Spain, for example, women’s work at home declined by only six hours per week as their workplace labour increased by eight hours per week from 2002 through 2010, say Jose Ignacio Gimenez-Nadal of the University of Zaragoza in Spain and Almudena Sevilla of Queen Mary University of London in the UK. The result is that Spanish women lost two hours of weekly leisure time over that period. A decline in leisure hours suggests a declining quality of life.

(Source: Applied Economics)