When An International Man's Day Is Necessary Then We Will See The Real Complaining (By Men)
Happy International Women’s Day, everybody! (Especially all you FINE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN out there.) Anyway, just in time for your special day, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has released a study showing that men in its member countries spend, on average, half an hour more of leisure time each day than do women. The OECD, reports the Daily Mail, “used the comparative laziness of men as evidence to support calls for new action to bring greater equality for women.” But there is more!
However the report appeared to ignore evidence in the OECD’s files which suggests that in fact the difference in leisure between men and women may be more to do with how each sex chooses to spend its time than with one working harder than the other.
The rich nations’ club reckons that shopping, soaking in the bath, doing your hair, having a lie-in or taking a long lunch all count as work rather than leisure.
Once the extra time women spend shopping and in the bathroom is added to the leisure hours count, British men have only 10 minutes more spare time a day than women.
Hahaha, because, you know, ladies love to shop. And they like to look nice. And sometimes they get so tired they need to lie down!
Okay, though, here’s the thing: Women eventually are going to dominate the workforce, particularly in the upper-echelon positions that have proved so resistant to allowing more than a token number of them thus far, to an unprecedented degree. No matter how strongly the economy bounces back, the “Great Mancession” accelerated this inevitable trend, which you see every day with more women than men are obtaining degrees in higher education and choosing to delay childbirth to better focus on their careers. I am not making an argument that there should not be continued agitation for equality-even though I am a white heterosexual American male, and therefore a member of the most privileged class in the world, I am not so dense as to imagine that there is anything like an equal opportunity even for white American females, let alone women of any other hue-but I do believe that progress on that front will come no matter what.
When it does, and women are finally able to control the levers of power where the choices are made about what skills are prized and what sorts of activities are valued, I think we’re going to be looking at a very different world. I don’t think that men-probably through a combination of general indolence and an inability to reflect on how deeply in our own favor the deck has been stacked-have actually thought through the reality of a world in which they are not the ones who assign the definitions. But I’m hopeful about it. All I ask is that you ladies will are kind enough to classify “sitting around on the couch, drinking” as “personal care.” Because, you know, I am already working AROUND THE CLOCK at that, and I’d like to be recognized for my efforts. Thanks!