For this paperΓÇÖs sake we will be looking at a comparison of men and women in how their time is spent and in detail how women seem to have more time focused on non-leisurely tasks than men. To help prove this point it however we must compare and contrast information found from five countries: France, Spain, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The two main categories that will be looked at to help verify the thesis of this paper are: ΓÇ£Retirement time [and] WomenΓÇÖs longer dayΓÇ¥ (Seager
70-71). By looking at these categories and their subcategories while comparing and contrasting the different selected countries it can help justify with data that women spend more of their time on non-leisurely, responsible, tasks rather than men.
Retirement is something that many people plan for years in advance. With registered savings plans as one of the main features people look at when people sign up with banks, it is an obvious statement that retirement is on the minds of many people, probably not twenty-four-seven but subconsciously when one gets a pay cheque and sees that fees have been deducted. The question then is when retirement arrives is how will one spend all their free time? Well with the information provided in Joni SeagerΓÇÖs The
Penguin Atlas of Women in the World it is clear that many people spend their ΓÇÿfreeΓÇÖ time responsible and non-leisurely. What this refers to is three of the four subcategories that have been presented with data in this book. The four subcategories that have been covered by Seager when comparing time spent during retirement are: washing dishes, watching TV, housework (which includes cooking, and cleaning) and childcare (which
Toor 3 will not be discussed) (Seager 70). First let us look at washing dishes, housework and childcare. For the first section of washing dishes we can compare four of five of the specified countries. Spain, Poland, France and the United Kingdom. There are recognizable similarities in Poland and Spain with their near ratios of 32 minutes of washing dishes per day of women: 10 minutes of men washing dishes per day in Poland and 33 minutes spent by women in Spain washing dishes per day to the mere 6 minutes spent by men washing dishes in Spain (Seager 70). France does have a big gap of 26 minutes spent by women and 9 spent by men washing dishes but the most differential country would be the United Kingdom (Seager 70). The UK is the only country in this category that sticks out because of its very little ratio of 27:23 minutes spent by women and men respectively (Seager 70). What this data can be interpreted as is though the gap is smaller in the United Kingdom it overall leads to the conclusion that women spend more time of their day taking the responsibility of having to wash the dishes during what should be their relaxing retirement time. Unfortunately there was no data record of the
USAΓÇÖs dish washing stats but it can compared to the hours spent a week working on the household chores per week. Spain that had the greatest gap in their dishwashing ratio also continues to have the greatest gap in the hours spent per week doing housework. Women spend on average 26 hours per week working on cooking and cleaning while men only a measly 4 hours (Seager 70). The UK have a lesser gap of 18 hours spent by women and 7 hours spent by men working on the house, however the United States in this category also has a gap of 13 hours spent per week by women and 4 hours spent by men doing household chores