12. Who volunteers more, women or men?

It's about equal. An identical percentage of women and men, 48%, volunteer each year and an identical 29% make a regular monthly commitment. But men volunteer for longer, an average of 4.7 hours per week compared with 3.4 hours for women. These are figures taken from the 1997 National Survey of Volunteering and reveal a trend towards male volunteering compared with 1991 when the last national survey was undertaken. However, when you look at more informal volunteering, that is activities not organised through organisations or groups, such as visiting elderly people, women volunteer more and more often they are carers for relatives.

The 2001 Home Office Citizenship Survey found that men and women were equally likely to be involved in both informal and formal volunteering.