Drawing on harmonized time-use survey microdata from 10 countries, this report examines how women and men allocate time across paid work, unpaid domestic and care activities, leisure, and other daily tasks—showing how everyday time allocation continues to shape social and economic inequality. 

The report applies innovative indicators—including time poverty, multitasking, gendered task segregation, mobility, and well-being—to reveal dimensions of inequality that remain largely invisible in conventional labour statistics. It demonstrates how gendered time-use patterns intersect with age, education, employment status, and household composition, helping identify where time pressures are most acute across the life course. 

Key highlights 

• 10 countries analysed using harmonized time-use survey microdata 
• Time poverty emerges as a critical and measurable dimension of gender inequality 
• Multitasking and mobility patterns reveal hidden constraints on women’s time 
• Household composition, particularly living with children, is a key driver of time inequality 
• New, policy-relevant indicators extend the analytical value of existing time-use data 

By demonstrating how existing time-use surveys can be leveraged for deeper, policy-relevant insights, the report offers a replicable analytical framework to inform evidence-based policymaking, donor programming, and the design of gender-responsive time policies aimed at reducing time poverty and promoting more equitable sharing of responsibilities. Accompanying the report is a companion technical guidance that translates this framework into practice, providing countries with clear, step-by-step approaches for producing the indicators used in the analysis, along with ready-to-use calculation scripts that can be applied directly to national time-use survey data. Together, the report and the guidance are designed to strengthen national capacity to generate actionable evidence from existing data and to support country-led policy design in diverse contexts.