an investigation of domestic laundry in europe - habits ... - SIFO

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20An investigation into the domestic laundry habits in EuropeThis survey investigates how people handle their laundry. To obtain exactknowledge we needed to question the person in charge of all or most of thelaundry in the household. In all of the countries, when approaching a personand requesting an interview, we had to ask if he or she was the person incharge of the laundry in the household. This means that the samples are representativefor the person in charge of the laundry in the different countries.There is one small difference, however: the Spanish sample was selected in adifferent way, by randomly choosing people in the streets to participate. However,since the survey does not deal with a sensitive topic, we would not expectthat a higher proportion refused to participate in Spain. On the otherhand, it is important to have in mind the different sampling methods whenanalysing the data.2.1.2 Who does the laundry?Our point of departure was that we wanted information from the person incharge of the laundry. When approaching a person, the interviewer was instructedto ask for “the person who is mainly responsible for the householdlaundry”. Table 2.1 shows that laundry is primarily women’s responsibility,especially in Greece. There are small differences between the other countries.In Norway we find the largest share of men who are mainly responsible forthe laundry, 18 %, closely followed by Spain and the Netherlands with 15 and14 %, respectively (see table 2.1).Table 2-1 The person in the household mainly responsible for the laundry in the differentcountries. Per centGreece(N=1000)496Netherlands(N=1001)1486Norway(N=1008)1882Spain(N=1001)1585MaleFemale2.1.3 Different laundry habits?Households differ in many ways, and we expect this to affect how much laundryneeds to be done and how it is done. We have already seen that the personin charge of the laundry is usually female. We wanted to see if there were anydifferences between the generations. When we divided people into three agegroups, the analysis reveals that there are relatively small differences betweenthe countries when it comes to age.
Assessment of the consumer laundry habits - a quantitative survey 21If you are living by yourself it is most likely that you have to do your ownlaundry. Since our sample consists of the person in charge of the laundry, weshould expect to find more men in the “single” categories. Our analysis confirmsthat there is a larger share of men in the “single” categories (single orpreviously married) than in the categories of married and cohabiting.Laundry is gendered work; that is, if you are married or cohabitant it is mostlikely that the woman is in charge of the laundry. This pattern is most distinctivein Greece, where only 1 % of the married persons in charge of the laundrywere male. At the opposite end of the scale we find the Norwegian respondents,where 12 % of the married persons in charge of the laundry were male.How much time you spend and how you do your laundry might have somethingto do with the amount of laundry to be done, which in turn is related tohow many persons there are in the household. Greek households tend to havethe greatest number of people in them; 30 % consist of 4 persons, and 16 % ofGreek households consist of 5 persons or more. On the opposite end we findthat the Norwegian households are most likely to consist of only 1 or 2 persons.2.2 Use of machinesMachines are meant to make work easier. Hence the more work you have todo, the more you can profit from using a machine. In all four countries thewashing machine is standard equipment, and almost every household has itsown (from 95 to 99 %).A tumble dryer can also save time. You don’t have to hang up the clothes todry, and afterwards less ironing is required. Further, it makes it possible tohandle more laundry in a shorter time. Finally, the tumble dryer can be a goodsolution if you have a lot of laundry, but less space to dry it. However, thetumble dryer is not as common as the washing machine, and there are substantialdifferences between the countries. In the Netherlands the tumble dryerseems to be quite common; 71% of the households have one. In Norway alittle less than half of the households have one (47%). In Greece it is very rareto find a household with a private tumble dryer (only 5%). In Spain owning aprivate tumble dryer is not as rare; every 4 th household owns one.We found that the share of households having a tumble dryer increases withthe number of persons in the household. This tendency is the same in all the
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Appendix ASurvey of domestic laundr
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Appendix A 1199. Which temperature
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Appendix A 1211.Working, in private
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Appendix BDeclaration detergentsGre
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Appendix B 125NorwayA) Omo Ultra Ta
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Appendix CSettings of the 15°C Was
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Appendix DSettings of the 30°C Was
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