Last week I gave a speech to a group of technology workers about workaholism being the standard, not the exception these days. I also shared the statistic that women work longer hours than men do, traditionally in the home and also at outplacement work sites. Remember mom putting in hours on dinner, cleanup and mending or other jobs while you and dad watched tv and hung out? Most moms worked up to bedtime when I was a kid. Work at home COUNTS as "work". We’re seeing this historical tendency transfer into the corporate workplace as well where women are asked to work longer hours and then come home to resume working. Reading a 1980’s women’s magazine, my mother was once heard to mutter "Time for myself? Whatever do they mean by that?" For many women world-wide, little has changed in the past twenty years.
The point I was making is that housework and child rearing are historically un-valued or undervalued jobs, and are typically taken on in a majority of households by women. Once a woman has worked a full day in the office, she potentially comes home to meal preparation, cleaning and parenting taking up her time in far greater proportions than do male parents. This is not my observation, but that of dozens of clients, industry research and formal surveys. I cited the article below and so am running it again for those of you who missed it back when…
This study cites how women in the UK are working longer, harder and as a result, are accumulating more stress. When you translate that to America, you can tack on a few hours and perhaps even add a quarter more bother to the stress load. Why? While they are fast approaching levels of job-stress we have in the U.S., Europeans tend to have more realistic work/life balance than Americans.
From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3178554.stm
WOMEN WORK LONGER HOURS
A woman’s work is never done may sound like a tired old cliché - but it may be more true than ever.
According to a new survey a woman’s working week is now half a day longer than it was five years ago - and that’s without housework.
The increase is down to the growing number of women in more high-powered management and professional jobs, say researchers.
In contrast, the total number of hours worked by men has fallen slightly over the same period - from 45.5 hours to 44.8 hours.
Key Findings
| * Average working week for all workers is 39.6 hours
* Men’s working hours have fallen slightly over the same period - from 45.5 to 44.8 hours
* The working week for younger workers (18-24 year olds) is 36.3 hours
* Almost a quarter have reduced working hours since 1998, largely due to parenthood
* A quarter of workers now work long hours, compared to only 10% in 1998 |
Girls to work more
According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (www.cipd.co.uk/default.cipd ) who conducted the survey, the shifting pattern is down to changes in the UK economy.
And these are more likely to become more magnified, not less, in the future, as the UK economy shifting from male-dominated manufacturing to the more female-friendly service sector.
Mike Emmott, head of employee relations at CIPD, said: "If efforts to secure equal treatment for women at work are to bear fruit we can expect to see their experience of work and working patterns aligned more closely with those of men."
However, men are still working much longer hours in paid jobs than women.
Compared to an average week of 44.8 hours for a man, women are working 33.9 hours.
Flexible friend?
The impact of the government’s campaign on work-life balance has had little effect, the report says.
The element of the report’s findings contradicts a recent report for the Office of National Statistics which said that six million workers were now benefiting from flexible work.
The government has introduced a range of family-friendly and flexible working measures.
It signed up to the European Social Chapter shortly after coming into power - and many European-inspired policies have subsequently been introduced.
In recent years: new fathers have gained paternity rights; women can take up to a year’s maternity leave - and parents now have the right to request flexible working patterns.
In addition, people working part-time have gained the right to equal treatment as full-time employees.
But according to the report there is an increasing proportion of people working long hours - more than 48 hours a week - up from 10% in 1998 to 25% today.
These long hours can have a negative effect on quality of life, with more than a quarter of those people who are working long hours admitting health problems as a result.
A quarter said had led to stress or depression and it had affected their sex lives and their relationship with their children.
More than four in ten workers say long hours "gets in the way of" their relationship with their partner or spouse.
"The only crumb of comfort", the report says is that one in four employees have cut back their hours in the past five years, although this is largely down to parenthood.
.jpg)
