posted April 23, 2007 11:56 AM         

Couch Entitlement

Surprise—men do just as much work as women do.

By Joel Waldfogel

Source: http://www.slate.com/id/2164268/?GT1=9330

Summary:

Everyone from economists and sociologists to Oprah knows that women work more than men. Their longer combined hours, at the home and at the office, stop men from taking afternoon naps on the couch and cause fights that end with men spending nights on the couch. And yet according to new study, those longer hours are a myth, because it's just not true that women carry a heavier load.

Throughout the world, men spend more time on market work, while women spend more time on homework. In the United States and other rich countries, men average 5.2 hours of market work a day and 2.7 hours of homework each day, while women average 3.4 hours of market work and 4.5 hours of homework per day. Adding these up, men work an average of 7.9 hours per day, while women work an average of—drum roll, please—7.9 hours per day. This is the first major finding of the new study. Whatever you may have heard on The View, when these economists accounted for market work and homework, men and women spent about the same amount of time each day working. The averages sound low because they include weekends and are based on a sample of adults that included stay-at-home parents as well as working ones, and other adults.

While men and women spend about the same time working in rich countries, women do work more than men in poor countries. And the gap widens as countries get poorer. While in the United States, which has a per capita GNP of roughly $33,000, there is no difference between the amount of male and female work, in Benin, Madagascar, and South Africa, which have a per capita income of less than $10,000, women work one to two hours more per day than men.

So, what explains the difference in the time that men and women spend working in richer vs. poorer countries? It's not a matter of women leveraging their greater earnings in places where they can earn more than men. Alas, there are no such places, and women do not reap greater market rewards in the countries where women work the most relative to men.

posted April 23, 2007 12:59 PM         

To be fair, I can't really say the same of the women I know who don't have children.

One thing I do notice is that there seems to be a more equitable sharing of domestic duties in younger couples (>30) - that gap seems to widen enormously for the people I know >45. I hear a lot of older women (60+) complain that the men get to retire at a certain age, but they never do (they still do all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc).

posted April 23, 2007 03:00 PM         

On the most part women with children do carry a heavier work load. They also have to schedule time for chauferring kids to and from school and after school activites, grocery shopping, trips to the doctor and dentist for the kids etc.

My husband has always shared the work load and still does in his retirement. So while it is true what you said about couples in their 60's on the most part, some of us got lucky and got good ones.

posted April 23, 2007 03:13 PM         

quote:

---

One thing I do notice is that there seems to be a more equitable sharing of domestic duties in younger couples (>30) - that gap seems to widen enormously for the people I know >45.

---

posted April 23, 2007 05:49 PM         

But when i was married I can assure you i worked a lot more than he did, for some reason being sitting in the couch holding a beer and watching tv just doesn't seem like work to me.

posted April 24, 2007 03:48 PM         

But I get the message loud and clear.I also would like to see that, although I hear it will never happen