If you want to study in Australia because you would like to mary one of the tough and yet friendly Aussie blokes, think twice! Australian men make the worst husbands in the world because they don’t like helping out with the housework, a British study claims. An economist from Oxford University found that women wanting to settle down were better off finding a guy from Scandinavia, the US or Britain than Australia.

Australian female students; tough time

Study author Dr Almudena Sevilla-Sanz said that based on her study of 12 developed countries it appears that Australian women have a tough time. Dr Sevilla-Sanz's study ranked Australia as the least egalitarian society, making its men unattractive marriage partners because they were more unlikely to do household chores. Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, the US and Northern Ireland were judged to be the most egalitarian countries, making their men the most attractive marriage partners.  Next were the Netherlands, Ireland, Spain, New Zealand, Japan, Germany, Austria and Australia in last place.

Male students do traditional women's work

The study shows that in egalitarian countries there is less social stigma attached to men doing what was traditionally women's work. "For instance, if paternity leave is the social norm, more men take it. This leads to men in egalitarian societies taking on more of a domestic role so the likelihood of forming a harmonious household becomes greater, while women living in less egalitarian countries were 20 to 50 per cent less likely to live with a man compared with women in more egalitarian societies.
The study, titled Household Division of Labor and Cross-Country Differences in Household
Formation Rates, is due to be published in the Journal of Population Economics.