Korea Women's Report 2026: women do twice the housework, rate wellbeing lower

Women in South Korea rate their own wellbeing lower than men do on almost every measure, and they carry about twice the housework when both partners work and there are young children at home, according to the 2026 Korea Women's Report released on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, by the FemTech Research Institute of Hanwha General Insurance. The survey of 3,000 women aged 20 to 69, alongside 500 men, found that finances were women's top priority but also the area where they felt least satisfied.

Life balance is often discussed as a matter of personal habits: sleep, exercise, saying no to extra work. This report puts numbers on something more structural. When a couple both work and have small children, the women in this survey said they did roughly 23 hours of housework a week, close to double the 12 hours the men reported. The difference, 11 hours a week, is more than a full extra working day of unpaid labour every week. It helps explain why the women in the survey were less satisfied than men with the time they have for themselves, 60.1% against 67.1%.

The money findings point the same way. Finances came out as the most important area of wellbeing for both women and men, at a little over half of each group. But fewer than half of the women, 40.7%, were satisfied with their own financial situation, which is 6.3 percentage points below the men. A gap between what people care about most and how well it is going for them is a common source of stress, and the report places that gap squarely in money.

The report comes from an insurance company that sells women's health products, and it was released alongside a wellness festival the company is running at its Hannam office in Seoul until October 25. Readers should weigh it as a company survey rather than official statistics. The published coverage does not give the fieldwork dates or the exact survey method, so the figures are best read as a snapshot of how respondents described their own lives, not as precise national measures.

The pattern will be familiar to Indian readers. India's own official numbers show an even wider split. The Time Use Survey 2024 by the National Statistics Office, under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, found that women spent an average of 289 minutes a day on unpaid domestic services for household members, against 88 minutes for men. In 2019 the figures were 299 and 97 minutes. The survey also found that 41% of women aged 15 to 59 took part in caregiving for household members, compared with 21.4% of men. The two surveys measure different things in different ways, so their numbers cannot be compared directly, but both show the same imbalance: the unpaid work that keeps a household running falls mostly on women, including women in paid jobs.

Short-term: The figures give employers, policymakers and families in South Korea a clear measure of how unevenly housework and financial stress fall between women and men.

Long-term: Repeated surveys of this kind can show whether the gap narrows. For women, the findings support practical changes that matter more than individual coping tips: a fairer split of housework at home, workplace policies that assume both parents have caring duties, and financial planning that women control.

Who is affected: Working women, especially mothers of young children in dual-income homes; their partners and families; employers designing leave and flexible work; and insurers and health services that design products around women's wellbeing.

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