Women staying at work longer to avoid stress at home

WOMEN are staying at work longer to escape their children, it emerged yesterday.

Just as the national minimum wage was increased to €7.65 an hour yesterday, a study of working hours shows that the larger a woman’s family, the longer she is likely to spend at work to avoid stress at home.

When she has two children or less, a woman works the normal 38-hour working week. But as her family increases, she works longer and longer, according to the study by the Work Foundation in London.

Author Dr Mark Cowling said: “We found that women with more children work longer - we believe to escape family stress and chaos at home.”

The size of his family does not affect how long a man spends at work, though singles and those with a partner tend to rush home earlier than married men. Irish women rank third in terms of long working hours with over 4% spending 60 hours or longer a week in their place of employment.

Irish women also have the largest families in the EU on average as the birth rate continues to fall throughout Europe.

The survey looked at the work patterns of people in the old EU 15 states and found that Irish workers generally work longer than those in any other country.

Over 6% of men work longer than 60 hours a week compared to 0.3% in the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, the Government was yesterday warned not to bring thousands of workers back into the tax net after the national minimum wage was increased to €7.65 an hour.

Both the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions said the Government should not bring those workers removed from the tax net after last December’s Budget back into the loop following the increase from €7.00 an hour.

Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Tony Killeen, announced the increase yesterday. The 75 cent increase had been recommended by the Labour Court earlier this year.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions have been seeking a 25% increase to €8.75.

Macdara Doyle of the ICTU said: “Particularly in the last few weeks we have seen a concerted campaign by employers groups against this and it’s quite welcome because we are talking about the least well-off in society benefiting.”

The increase will come into force on May 1 and the minister said the move would “benefit low paid workers in our society.

“In particular, it will be of benefit to part-time workers and younger workers,” he said.