A new study, apparently, has found that working long hours is worse for women than for men because women who work long hours tend to eat more unhealthy food and consume more caffeine than men who work long hours.
Now, nowhere do I see a mention of the home lives of these women. Because this jumped out at me:
“Women who work long hours eat more high-fat and high-sugar snacks, exercise less, drink more caffeine and, if smokers, smoke more than their male colleagues,” said Dr. Daryl O’Connor, a researcher at Britain’s Leeds University.
“For men, working longer hours has no negative impact on exercise, caffeine intake or smoking,” O’Connor said in a statement released by the Economic and Social Research Council, which funded his study.
Emphasis mine.
Now, which of these things — drinking coffee, smoking or exercise — requires free time? And given that many, many working women also take on the bulk of childcare and housework responsibilities, it’s not really that difficult to see that a woman who works longer hours AND has to take care of the kids and the house when she gets home would be more stressed and wouldn’t be able to get in the nice stress-relieving workout that maybe her husband gets to do. So she turns to stress eating, coffee and smoking.
I haven’t seen the actual study, but the writeup by Reuters certainly sends a pernicious little message that working outside the home is bad for women.