(INDEPENDENT) 19 June 2008:

…well, not quite. In Ireland these days there’s still a gender imbalance in how much of it is done by women and how much is done by men. Women are working on average nearly forty minutes more each day than men (this is including both paid work and work in the home).

Compare that to the cousins over the Irish Sea, the British, where total work is the same for each sex.

In both countries women do more of the houosehold work, men more of the paid outside the home. But in the total amount done the Irish are currently about where the Brits were thirty years ago, which sounds about right. While Ireland has advanced greatly economically in recent years, socially it’s still a conservative place. Divorce was only legalized a few years ago and abortion is still illegal. That there’s still no gender parity in working hours shouldn’t be all that much of a surprise.

(NEW YORK TIMES) 15 June 2008:

There’s a slightly surprising result from looking at the figures about who does all the work around the house. Yes, the number of hours that both men and women work to keep the home running have been falling as a result of technology. And yes, men have also been doing more than their previous share of what work remains.

However, the huge imbalance in child care hours still remains: women do more than men in a ratio of five to one, very much the same number of hours as their grandmothers.

It’s almost enough to make you think there might be something immutable, biological, about this, isn’t it?

(LUBBOCK AVALANCHE) 4 March 2008:

A small data point in the changing world of work: In the 1970s, tax assessors offices in Texas were entirely male dominated. The junior secretarial and clerical staff were often women, but the senior assessors (an elected position) were almost entirely male.

However, now, in Lubbock, for example, there are no men in that position at all. The same is nearly true in the surrounding area: 80 percent of the elected senior officials are female.

Take it as an indication that changing the world might take some time: it’s taken an entire generation since the equality at work legislation was first passed for this to happen.

(INDEPENDENT) 28 January 2008:

It’s well known that men (in general) are better at spatial tasks, women at those requiring empathy or emotional intelligence. Another way of putting this (although it’s an analogy, not a description) is that men work on testosterone, women on estrogen.

In this analogy the testosterone leads to the puffing and showing off to which men are prone, while women work together better when in groups.

Author Fay Weldon says that men get dumber in groups (just look at Iraq) while women become more intelligent in groups (women’s self help groups in Africa).

(NEW YORK POST) 14 January 2008:

There’s a general belief that men and women approach work and problem solving differently. Some men approach work with the ego, using prowess to define and advance their place in the hierarchy. Some women approach work and problem solving in a more communicative manner, as part of the team. This is rather “Men are from Mars, Women from Venus” and while the sterotypes are a useful generalization, they don’t in fact hold in each and every case.

One woman who has been a boss in both male and female dominated environments puts it rather differently. There are procrastinators and there are doers: and there are male and female versions of both.

(THE SCOTSMAN) 1 January 2008:

As we all know there’s been a huge rise in lifespans over the past century meaning that there are ever more people living into their second century. There is however a large disparity between the numbers of men and women that are doing so: they’re overwhelmingly women.

Part of this is to do with women’s generally longer lifespans, part of it is to do with the deaths of men in the wars of the last century.

But this imbalance is expected to lessen in the decades to come. For men no longer work (or very few do) in the dirty and dangerous jobs that threaten long term health: and they’re also at least beginning to take note of the advice on healthy living and eating.

(BRISBANE TIMES) 24 June 2007:

Researchers in Australia have found that for men, working longer hours can actually strengthen their marriage. Those who worked more than 50 hours a week did not have an increased risk of divorce, while those who work less than 35 did.

For women, however, those who worked more than 50 hours a week did have a higher risk of divorce.

The researchers were far too polite to explain it this way, but it really does look like it’s possible to have a man cluttering up the house for too many hours each week while, for the men, there’s a definite value in having someone back in the house taking care of it while they work outside it.

Not very modern when you think about it.

(BBC): 20 April 2007:

New research from America’s National Bureau of Economic Research shows that something everyone commonly assumes to be true simply isn’t.

With the majority of women now working outside the home and also doing the majority of the domestic work, there’s been a suspicion that they are getting the raw end of the deal. What the research shows is that in fact, right across the rich countries, men and women work almost exactly the same hours.

Women do work more in the home, it is true, but men make up for that with more hours of paid work outside the home.

(CBS NEWS) April 2006:

CBS News recently asked American adults the question, “Do you think it is preferable or not preferable for women to work while they are raising children?”  In response, 49% said it is preferable, 32% said it’s not preferable, and 19% said they don’t know/no answer.   Perhaps the wisest are the 19% who were on the fence.  There’s been intense debate for years over the best way to raise children.  There are hundreds of situations and no easy answers.  What might be right for one family won’t be right for the next.