A new government report indicates that men and women have different work patterns. As reported by McClatchy, here is how it shakes out:
Employed men work an average of 42 minutes per day more than their female counterparts, according to the 2015 American Time Use Study by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And while that’s partially due to more women working part-time jobs than men, even among full-time employees men worked 8.2 hours per day compared to women’s 7.8 hours.
Additionally, 50 percent of women said they did some housework, such as cleaning or laundry, every day, while only 22 percent of men said the same. And 70 percent of women said they prepped or cleaned up food in an average day, while 43 percent of men said the same.
Men were slightly more likely than women to participate in yard work — 12 percent to 8 percent.
Women with children under 6 years old spend about an hour a day providing physical care to children, such as bathing or feeding them. Men in the same category spent 25 minutes per day on physical care.
Kate Irby, who wrote the story for McClatchy, suggests in her lead that the differences are results of "pressures on men to be breadwinners and women to be housewives," which have been declining but are still present.
Pressures–it all sounds so . . . unjust.
Perhaps there is another explanation: Men and women simply make different choices, with men still more likely to at least strive to be breadwinners, while women are still more likely to mix more involvement with children with their professional lives.
We definitely are against pay discrimination on the basis of gender, but it still should be observed that this data runs counter to the equal pay for equal work movement: this data shows that women and men take different roles in the workplace–and these choices should be factored into any claims about a gender wage gap.