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