gender

As I understand it, the leisure gap between men and women has largely to do with the fact that women spend more time taking care of children and (especially) the home. I don’t know if this applies internationally or not. In any case, here’s a graphic illustrating the leisure gap across 18 different countries (via Jezebel):

UPDATE: In the comments, Elena linked to the original OECD report, if you’d like to explore the methodology etc.

A big thanks to Cycles who went and looked it up.  A summary:

Chapter 2, “Special Focus: Measuring Leisure in OECD Countries,” answers most of the questions posed here about what is considered “leisure” and what is not.

Brief overview:

“The approach taken here is to divide time during the day into five main categories. These five-time categories are 1) Leisure, narrowly defined, 2) Paid work, 3) Unpaid work, 4) Personal care, and 5) Other time (uses of time which are either unaccounted for or undefined).”

and

“‘Paid work’ includes full-time and part-time jobs, breaks in the workplace, commuting to the workplace, time spent looking for work, time spent in school, commuting to and from school, and time spent in paid work at home. “Unpaid work” includes all household work (chores, cooking, cleaning, caring for children and other family and non-family members, volunteering, shopping, etc.). “Personal care” includes sleep, eating and drinking, and other household, medical, and personal services (hygiene, grooming, visits to the doctor, hairdresser etc.). “Leisure” includes hobbies, games, television viewing, computer use, recreational gardening, sports, socialising with friends and family, attending events, and so on. “Other time” includes all activities not elsewhere mentioned.”

… and then it goes into even MORE detail about specific activities within each of those five categories.

I highly recommend reading at least Chapter 2 if you have questions. It includes a fascinating backgrounder on past studies and how they categorized of time-use.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

This cartoon satirizes the common sitcom family that includes an average-looking, bumbling husband and a gorgeous, put-together wife. It reverses the roles to illustrate (1) how offensive these sitcoms are to men (men are useless oafs who can’t be expected to act like adult human beings) and (2) how we take for granted that hot chicks should marry useless oafs (via):

I know, it’s satire, and, if you’re a regular reader, you know how I worry about satire.  To me, this points out how stupid (and gendered) family sitcoms are.  But, for others, it might just reinforce the hateful stereotype that fat women are disgusting and useless.  The problem is that the impact of the cartoon depends on who is watching it.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Sarah S. sent in these two commercials for am/pm:

Dear am/pm:

1. I am a customer and I have a vagina. To be more specific, I am not a 20-year-old, het, white dude who likes sports, video games, and top ramen. Also, my mom doesn’t still do my laundry. (I’m just guessin’.)

2. Women are not stuff. They should not be lumped in with Funyuns. Get a clue.

Here’s a couple similar posts: Women are precious belongings (bubblewrap them) and pieces of furniture.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

The Women’s Media Center has compiled a series of clips exposing the racist and sexist discourse surrounding Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court:

Via Racialicious.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, Julie Lewis-Dreyfus Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Christina Applegate, Jane Krakowski, and Mary Louise-Parker candidly discuss getting older in Hollywood. The discussion starts about about 1:00. It’s not particularly organized, but it’s nice to hear perspectives from the inside:

Via Feministing.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Comic-Con ended yesterday, so I’m afraid you’ve already missed out on a wonderful opportunity. I don’t mean attending Comic-Con itself. I’m referring to a contest that S. and Mordicai K. told us about, the Sin to Win contest from video game company EA (image from Kotaku; also see the discussion at ars technica):

The text about the “steps” of the contest:

1. Commit acts of lust. Take photos with us or any booth babe. 2. Prove it. [Gives Twitter and email address]. 3. Repeat. Find more babes for more chances to win.

Brian Crecente at Kotaku says,

Despite the tone of the contest, the rules state that judge’s reserve the right to disqualify any submission that are “inappropriate for any reason, including without limitation, for depicting or mentioning sex, violence, drugs, alcohol and/or inappropriate language.”

Um…ok…Mixed messages, anyone?

As S. pointed out in the email to us, the “You” figure in the instruction is almost certainly meant to be male (though it theoretically could be a short-hair female), and the prize is specifically a woman–not a date with an attractive person. So we see the reinforcement of the presumption that “gamer = heterosexual male.” S. also says,

You can take photos of “us” (presumably EA employees or possibly developers) instead of or in addition to “booth babes”, but you cannot apparently win dinner with one of “us” — only with “two hot girls.”

So the possible prize isn’t to maybe hang out with some of the people who maybe create or market games, because apparently, who’d want to do that? Or, perhaps, what developer/EA employee wants to spend an evening being forced to hang out with some random contest winner?

For other examples of women being offered as (less explicit) rewards to men, see this post about Tag, a Dell Computer ad, and an Air Conditioning Technical Institute van. I was going to post links to posts about the presumption that gamers are male, but there were so many, it’s easier just to tell you just to go to the “More” tag and then search for “video games” or “video games gender.”

The Wall Street Journal published an article about “cankles” (sent in by Dmitriy T.M.). It begins: “This summer women have a new body part to obsess about.”

There’s a gender-specific warning (men apparently need not worry about cankles) and passive language. “Women” simply “have” a new insecurity. It’s not as if, maybe, perhaps, the Wall Street Journal is actively telling women they must worry about cankles.

They offered an illustration:

(As an aside, can you imagine being the illustrator who got this assignment? Like, do you think he drew the cankles and then went home and made himself a stiff drink, stared at his art degree diploma, and wondered what had become of his dreams?)

And!

In the guise of a history lesson, they offer a whole bunch more nasty euphemisms for body parts that you (and by “you” I mean ladies) “have” to worry about:

Via Jezebel.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

These displays, featuring mannequins posed as if they are being attacked by an invisible assailant, could be seen in the windows at Barneys New York this week:

They were disassembled when shoppers complained.

Daily News, via.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.