So Jezebel is running a piece today about how women work harder than men. You can just see them all, in their stretchy pants and broomsticks, dancing around and cackling na na na boo boo, we work more hard than you.
Researchers observed 274 subjects working at companies scattered around the United States in financial services, consumer products, education, health care and energy. Approximately 53 percent of subjects were female and 47 percent were male.
During a ten-minute experimental trial, female subjects worked 2.5 minutes compared to 2.1 minutes for male subjects without a privacy filter installed and 4.9 minutes versus 4.3 minutes for male subjects with a privacy filter installed.
When given the opportunity to walk away during an experimental waiting period 38 percent of female workers walked away compared to 52 percent of male workers.
http://jezebel.com/5987056/women-work-harder-than-men-study-says
Hmm. Okay. Apparently, women spent more time working, but at what?
Remember this:
Number one occupational category for women?
S E C R E T A R Y
Just picture all those ladies, working their asses off filing stuff alphabetically, scheduling appointments and animating Power Point slides.
Wow.
Healthcare? Oh, hello nurse! Can you please let me know where the surgeon is? Go wipe that ass and fetch that tray of medicine and I’ll stand here and wait for the cardiologist, shall I?
Hard to know where to begin with this stupidity. How are the researchers measuring “work”? I can imagine it goes something like this:
Betsy the legal secretary sat down and started to type up the list of statutes that apply to John the lawyer’s new case. Oh look, someone has already indicated what order they go in. Yeah, that would be John. I’ll just sit here and transcribe his notes, after I finish posting these adorable cupcakes and this awesome baby mermaid crochet pattern to my Pinterest board.
Oops, privacy filter. Guess I’ll have to just keep typing.
Ho hum. Look at me working.
John, on the other hand, has just spent 20 hours reviewing all the legal precedents that are relevant to his case. Now he needs to figure out which ones are most directly applicable. He sits for a moment, just thinking.
Guess he’s not working at all, is he?
What a stupid study.
Let’s apply this to my life. My day begins at 530AM, when I get up to have a little peace and quiet and coffee to myself, and I can watch the sunrise, which is one of my favorite things. I tool around the internet and then stop to write a blog post when something pisses me off, which generally doesn’t take long.
Then I get my day going. Get the kids up and off to school, do the shopping, laundry, cooking, cleaning, blah blah blah … all the shit I do all day, including sitting down and doing absolutely fucking nothing whenever I damn well please. Kids get home from school and I start dinner preparations and then serve and eat and tidy up after and soon enough bedtime rolls around and then there’s all that work and then I finally have some time alone with Mr. JB and we talk about his day and my day and discuss whatever family management issues we need to discuss (new dance shoes – order online?) and by 10:30 PM we’re in bed and then it’s hooker time! My day ends around 10:35 PM.
Haha!
Just kidding, honey.
I’m usually asleep by 11PM, and I spend most of the day on my feet, getting shit done.
Working, in other words.
Whew! Check that out. And it doesn’t end on the weekends! Nope. No days off!!!
I regularly put in 17.5 hour days, seven days a week, 365 days a year. That’s over 6000 hours per year. And I’ve been at it for almost 13 years!
Goddamn, I work a lot.
Mr. JB? Good god. He works about 20 hours a week, doing the actual job he is paid to do. You see, he is paid to solve problems and to communicate the solutions to the people who need to know them. Most of his work week is spent doing one thing:
Thinking.
Most days, you’ll find him sitting in a chair reading something. He’ll read a couple paragraphs, drop the paper to his lap and just stare out the window. He might search for information on the computer now and then, but mostly he just thinks. He spends a lot of time wandering around different sites chatting to people.
He doesn’t appear to be working at all.
But he is.
Mr. JB just read this at work (you slacker!), and he wants me to add that he regularly gets up from 1AM to 4AM to write reports because it’s quiet and it suits his biorhythms. I doubt the researchers would capture that kind of work, either.
In one of the first comments over at Jezebel, a woman writes that her boyfriend gets paid to sleep at a firehouse?
Are you fucking kidding me, bitch? No, he does not get paid to sleep at a firehouse! He gets paid to run into burning buildings and drag people out! He gets paid to stop the fire from spreading uncontrollably and burning the whole damn street down. He gets paid to make sure the damn fire is out!
He gets paid to sleep. Jesus.
It’s wonderful that researchers can come up with these clever topics to encourage women to think themselves equal to men in every conceivable way, but until we know WHAT it is that women are working at, it’s all just smoke and mirrors.
The reality is that most women are working as support staff for MEN, who are doing all the real work. Sucks ladies, but the truth hurts. When you don’t really have to stop to think about your job because it’s so fucking simple and stupid the average fifth grader could manage it just fine, well, yeah. You’re going to appear to be working more.
And thinking less.
How much thought does the alphabet require?
Lots of love,
JB
Ouch, JB, today you’re a little hard on us women who’ve stayed home to bring up a well balanced bunch of kids. There is a bit of thinking required in that occupation in amongst the generally mundane daily chores. There’s planning and budgeting and scheduling and organizing multiple activities.
Plus, in my case, I’m the “decider” (as G.W.Bush would say), I’m the decorator, I’m the home handy-woman, I’m the gardener. That all takes some thinkin’, don’t ya know!
Still luv ya, though
Your house is beautiful though!
You should see mine. Ask CleverGuy.
In truth though, just trying to settle the argument of who got the best celery sticks (actually happened today) takes the patience and negotiating skills of the toughest mergers and acquisitions guy out there.
Gah!
The difference, in my opinion, is risk.
I’m a stay-at-home mom. What I do isn’t particularly difficult. It’s tedious, repetitive and necessary. If I don’t do my job everything does kind of grind to a halt and it’s important in it’s own way. But it’s not especially stress inducing.
My husband works loooong days (often 11-12 hours) and his job is super stressful and risky. He is a commission only guy, so if he doesn’t perform he doesn’t get paid. He’s a financial consultant and invests money for clients- if he screws up he’s on the hook financially. There aren’t a lot of women in his line of work and very, very few who make the kind of money the men do. In fact, many women still work at his firm who would have been fired had they been white men. In corporate America there is definitely a different standard for women and minorities– you can’t get fired unless you do something so egregious that you can’t turn around and sue the company for discrimination.
True story: There was a gay woman who worked at my husband’s company who was caught stealing on camera and she wasn’t fired. This woman was a lawsuit walking and everyone knew it. Fortunately she left to work for another company– everyone was so glad to see her go.
Amazing that they still get away with the 70cents on the dollar lie that she cited in her propaganda piece. You are wrong about one thing, many nurses male and female work very hard. Surgeons are compensated for their advanced education and longer hours.
Navian, I agree.
This came off as a bit slaggy towards nurses, and two of the best friends are nurses, so I know how hard they work.
My husband’s best friend is a neurologist, and even though nurses work hard, it’s nothing compared to what Dr.K does.
I love you JudgyBitch…..you are the opposite of Amanda Marcotte,
Well, as someone who actually works in Corporate Hell 9 hours a day and has been for the last 27 years (just got home from such a place) I can give you the REAL truth about all of this- and not from just working for one company, but several companies AND dealing with hundreds of OTHER companies as clients.
This ‘study’ was conducted on women who were actually THERE at the office working. Allow me to explain..
In any white collar type of setting, any female above ‘admin’ (their new dressed up word for ‘secretary’) or receptionist, comes in late, leaves early (usually around 2pm if not earlier) takes Mondays & Fridays off, takes weeks off at a time for god knows what, extended vacations, calls in sick every other week.. a white collar female above the very lowest position works on average about 60% of the year.
You think I’m crazy or exaggerating – I swear to you on my MOTHER I am not lying to you. It’s like some kind of phenomenon- I was explaining all of this to Girl Writes What on her radio show when I called in once and completely blew her mind. I worked for a firm once that all of the women who were hired would request that they start 2 weeks later than their hire date for a ‘vacation.’ I know of the statistics that say something to the effect that ‘women work an average of 35 hours vs. men who work 40′ – complete and utter BULLSHIT. Who ever did THAT study had never worked in an office before.
I’ll prove it to you.. tomorrow if you’re at home during the day, go to any white collar business website in any large city and go to the ‘about us’ section and look up the female employees- call the business and then ask for her. “I’m sorry, she’s not in today..” OR “she isn’t here RIGHT NOW.. (this is how they’ll cover for her) can I take a message?” Or “she’s not available” (she’s not there) may I ask who’s calling?”
Women are absolute GENIUSES at figuring out how to miss work without getting fired, but then again the other half of the reason they don’t get fired is as everyone knows, employers are frightened of lawsuits. Such geniuses that they’ve managed to somehow keep this nationwide phenomenon out of public discourse. Women have actually left the workplace, they’ve just done it in a very shrewd way. When women ARE at work, their idea of ‘work’ is sending out irritating emails about some petty something that doesn’t even matter or having endless ‘meetings’ about problems they themselves cause.
I can’t even calculate how many times I’ve told female employees, “hey Jennifer, you’re not doing anything anyway, why don’t you just go ahead and go home.” And instead of getting upset, they squeal with joy! They’re like children and a great deal of their attitude about work is like that of a child: “Na na na na, I don’t have to come into work” or “I get to leave early.”
damn. sounds a bit like my friend(male), concerned only with fun. hve to near shout at him to get him to shut up and do work. sheer laziness. i’d still take him over most western modern women though
just more women trying to pony in on men’s success and shit cause they can’t get their shit together to get their own. kudos to those who actually work hard at difficult jobs and to those who recognize that their jobs aren’t as difficult and accept and acknowledge it. we need more of em
Women making less and working more.
I’ve heard many women rail about “the man” (ostensibly me) because they get paid less, have fewer promotional opportunities and have to work harder to reach the same status level as a man. What I normally hear next is that someone need to fix it (basically, the people running the company need to change what they are doing as defined by this woman). Fundamentally, that is demanding someone else change their behavior because you are unhappy.
Basic tenant of life, taught in almost every self help or therapy session, is that you can only change yourself and that you are responsible for you. So, let’s have fun and apply that concept to woman in the workplace, or more specifically, them making their own workplace.
I will pretend to be her…
I am sick of getting paid less and working more! I’m going to start my own business, then I will be in control of my destiny. Because I work harder than men, my business will be more successful. I will make more money, get more clients, use fewer resources and have higher profit margins. I can also hire the countless other undervalued women. The best female workers will want to work for me because I will pay them a fair wage. Plus, because they are used to working harder, we all will be more successful. In a short time, my company will take over the currently male dominated market. My business, with my sisters, will be the leader and drive the discriminatory male-dominated companies into the ground because we work harder for less pay. Since American consumers and businesses are mostly interested in the bottom line, as long as my prices are lower, they will prefer my company’s products. Finally, men cannot keep me from being successful. I am women, here me roar!
Here is a rather famous true life story where a woman went and did just that a few years back
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1168182/Catfights-handbags-tears-toilets-When-producer-launched-women-TV-company-thought-shed-kissed-goodbye-conflict-.html
I’m surprised you hadn’t heard about this- a woman starts an all-female firm -of course it’s a ‘production’ company for television – only THE most superfluous type of business imaginable- Heaven FORBID that any female be subjected to the humiliation of either starting or working for any type of business that involved basic necessities that people actually needed- OH the lowly ‘STATUS’ of it all, SOB SOB SOB. Women have committed suicide over less HORRORS.
Of course they pleasantness wears off after about a day- exactly what happens any time you concentrate any number of adult females in any setting day after day, and immediately complete chaos and insanity ensue.
We see the 3 horns of evil that are repeated over and over as a theme that always appear around women – jealousy, spitefulness, and vindictiveness. No one hardly shows up for work, nothing gets done, vicious back biting, gossip and horrific things said about each other is all that takes place, until finally the place just has to shut down.
Women are ‘nest builders’ – that’s what they DO. You can call me a ‘misogynist’ (never met in my entire life) all you want, but it isn’t going to change the fact. If you’re not married, pay attention to the role the wife plays in any marriage- she wards off strangers or anyone wanting to make way into her house- it’s HER HOUSE- HER TERRITORY.
And that behavior doesn’t suddenly magically end when a woman walks into an office for what we’ll be kind and call ‘work.’ Now take a whole LOT of territorial nest builders and put them all in the same space day after day after day and what you have is possibly the most horrible nightmare ensue almost immediately.
It would be like putting twenty cats into a large cage all together. All you would hear ALL DAY CONSTANTLY is “RARRRRAWWWWARRRR HSSSSSST RA RA” and then catfights with blood and gore, cats with injuries – it would go on 24/7 and would be very, VERY cruel to do to all those cats. Subjecting women to each other is no less cruel. Just one more reason women don’t belong in business. And then trying to manage them all is like HERDING cats- it just doesn’t work.
Now, I know I am not a social science major, but as a physics major I would just have to leave this remark: The study was done over ten – fucking – minutes. Maybe women piss-fart around and have to take extra time to complete simple tasks. Who knows? But ten minutes, you have got to be kidding me.
On Wed 27th Feb 2013, I attended a talk in one of the House of Commons committee rooms in London. The discussion was about the failings of the European Union and how it is the most unproductive economic block in the world.
It is in serious decline and seems to think it’s way out is to introduce more and more punitive controls to squeeze more taxes out of the financial sector and entrepreneurs. It is a recipe for economic oblivion.
What was emphasized though is that EU governance is a communist system that is excellent at propaganda, but also attacks freedom and choice thus impoverishing its citizens. It is full of corruption and is incapable of making good and sound decisions. The only thing that was not mentioned was (although speaking to co-attendees they agreed with me when I spoke of it) was the influence of marxist-feminist policies that are adding to the economic destruction the Euro-zone is facing.
The EU and feminist ideology (and its obsession with Patriarchal oppression) is a religion to the ideologues. They cannot be reasoned with and they refuse to accept the facts in front of them. Instead they seek to bend figures and reality to fit into their philosophy and those facts that don’t fit are simply rejected or ignored.
The situation in Europe was likened as being akin to the rise of fascism in the 1930s. Britain has three traditional main parties and all of them offer the same thing – no option but to continue along the same path.
I am glad you are a women saying this, a man would instantly be discounted.