Unemployed Women Take Care of People While Unemployed Dudes Watch TV

If you’ve ever lived with a dude, you know that men and women, despite political correctness, often live differently. Well now, a survey accounting for every minute of every day of unemployed men and women proved what you knew already—women are spending the time they’re not at a job taking care of people … while dudes are watching TV.

With data pulled from an American Time Use Survey, New York Times writer Josh Katz culled how each sex spent every moment of every day and one thing was clear for everyone. The unemployed are getting more sleep than people with jobs, at least one hour more a day. Yes, I’m thinking how I can reconfigure my life to do that right now too …

Elsewhere, it was all about television—and probably Netflix, HBO Go, Showtime and Amazon Prime, if we’re honest.

For every one person whose main activity was job searching, there were almost six whose main activity was television and movie watching.

The gender breakdown is striking. Of the 65 people who devoted more of their daytime to watching TV and movies than any other activity, 46 are men versus 19 who are women.

As for housework, women are more likely to clean up while men, we’ll have to assume by the data provided, are fine with living like pigs (or expecting women to clean up after them). Cooking, cleaning, lawn care, paying bills, or working on the car encompassed “housework” in the survey, and women spent at six hours a day doing that stuff while men spent less than three hours.

Then came the “Caring for others” section, where one-fifth of women spend most of their day caring for someone else. In fact, most of the women in the American Time Use Survey had children, including one who had seven (!!!), so their care took up most of their time.

Ultimately, in the final graph charting the activities of unemployed women and men, the male vertical boasted a lot of TV and movie watching with housework and leisure time in a tie for second and third popular. The female block showed mostly housework, caring for others with TV and movies as a third most popular activity. Gender equality is such a slow train of progress; I wrote about similar numbers in 2014.

One of these days, women, we must all rise up and throw down your brooms and your children! (I’m kidding about the kids, but you get the point.)