Domestic chores survey gets feather dusters flying

File photo / Thinkstock

It seems rural women are ahead of their city sisters in the domestic goddess stakes by a country mile - on paper at least.

Recently released time-use survey results show that in 2009-2010 rural women spent the most time on household work, averaging about three hours a day.

This was 44 minutes more a day than urban women spent flicking the duster.

And although rural men spent a whole 1 hour, 17 minutes less than their women on household chores they still managed to apply the elbow grease for 27 minutes a day more than their townie mates.

The data was gathered by Statistics New Zealand in its New Zealand Time Use Survey for 2009-10 and collated to look at the effect of geographical location on New Zealanders' use of time.

The results were gleaned from an analysis which compared the time use of a selection of people living in a rural settlement (defined as a settlement with fewer than 1000 people) and an urban settlement (more than 1000).

It found rural people spent about 30 minutes more on household work each day than urban people (2 hours, 32 minutes compared with 1 hour, 57 minutes).

Of course, the townies' comeback could be that cockies need to get out more.

Those in town certainly do, if statistics are to be believed.

On average, urban people spent 12 minutes more a day on social entertainment than those in rural areas and this included going along to watch a sports match.

- APNZ