Another survey (published today) has told us what we know - that women do more housework than men. I am deeply sceptical that women are particularly hard done by in western society. We may work harder, but while we are popping a few clothes in the washing machine, the men are heading for an early grave in front of the television.

Women may work longer hours, but do they work harder? Their life expectancy in Ireland, partly to do with smoking, drinking and eating patterns, but possibly also in part to do with doing lighter work, is much longer than men's.

http://www.cso.ie/statistics/lifexpect.htm

Women are still putting up with a lot of social and economic disadvantages, but surely the life expectancy figures mean something about whose getting the best deal ?

Some work is more stressful than other work. It is tough looking after children but I don't know if it is quite as stressful as running your own company. If my wife wants to go out and earn hundreds of thousands while I look after the sprogs and clean the house (maybe plan a few extensions) then I will give the offer serious consideration.

There are different forms of stress, too. Perhaps the mindnumbing experience of too much time away from the adult world is less physically wearing than the adrenal-busting life that a lot of men lead.

Another thing that would strike me is that both men and women do far too much work. Tribal life with a bit of agriculture and some hunting doesn't seem to demand more than 3 or 4 hours work a day.

IMO The Executives are not the people who have the most stress in life, they just like to think their job is hard so they can justify their salaries. A sort of guilt complex.

The people who have insufficient money to live are the ones who know what stress actually is. The people who are ill and can't pay the bills, the people who can't do enough to feed and cloth their families. Now that is stress. Stress is all about lack of control of events around you.

Squire wrote:

IMO The Executives are not the people who have the most stress in life, they just like to think their job is hard so they can justify their salaries. A sort of guilt complex.

The people who have insufficient money to live are the ones who know what stress actually is. The people who are ill and can't pay the bills, the people who can't do enough to feed and cloth their families. Now that is stress. Stress is all about lack of control of events around you.

That would certainly be borne out by the much lower life expectation of people on lower incomes - and again poor diet, cold housing, smoking to relieve stress and so on come into it.

cactus flower wrote:

Squire wrote:

IMO The Executives are not the people who have the most stress in life, they just like to think their job is hard so they can justify their salaries. A sort of guilt complex.

The people who have insufficient money to live are the ones who know what stress actually is. The people who are ill and can't pay the bills, the people who can't do enough to feed and cloth their families. Now that is stress. Stress is all about lack of control of events around you.

That would certainly be borne out by the much lower life expectation of people on lower incomes - and again poor diet, cold housing, smoking to relieve stress and so on come into it.

Fair enough, but we are talking women vis-a-vis men, not executives vis-a-vis the poor.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

Fair enough, but we are talking women vis-a-vis men, not executives vis-a-vis the poor.

I know I am in one of those moods today, but men tend to be the Executives and Women tend to be in low incomes and looking after families and the sick.

Back to trying to make some dam piece of software work the way it did before the update.

Check out the english royal family. A lack of poverty has not affected their longevity....with a few noble exceptions

SeathrúnCeitinn wrote:

Check out the english royal family. A lack of poverty has not affected their longevity....with a few noble exceptions

Too many first-cousin marriages, SeathrúnCeitinn.

cactus flower wrote:

SeathrúnCeitinn wrote:

Check out the english royal family. A lack of poverty has not affected their longevity....with a few noble exceptions

Too many first-cousin marriages, SeathrúnCeitinn.

Tell me about it. Plenty of relatives very few guests

Squire wrote:

IMO The Executives are not the people who have the most stress in life, they just like to think their job is hard so they can justify their salaries. A sort of guilt complex.

The people who have insufficient money to live are the ones who know what stress actually is. The people who are ill and can't pay the bills, the people who can't do enough to feed and cloth their families. Now that is stress. Stress is all about lack of control of events around you.

Which is actually what stresses executives - they're supposed to be responsible for all kinds of things they actually have little control over, and operate in an often fast-changing environment where the information they need won't usually be available until next year. It's one of the reasons businesses like stability above all else - it literally reduces their stress levels.

Obviously, one can say it's more 'artificial' than trying to keep a household going on minimum wage, but it's quite real.

ibis wrote:

Squire wrote:

IMO The Executives are not the people who have the most stress in life, they just like to think their job is hard so they can justify their salaries. A sort of guilt complex.

The people who have insufficient money to live are the ones who know what stress actually is. The people who are ill and can't pay the bills, the people who can't do enough to feed and cloth their families. Now that is stress. Stress is all about lack of control of events around you.

Which is actually what stresses executives - they're supposed to be responsible for all kinds of things they actually have little control over, and operate in an often fast-changing environment where the information they need won't usually be available until next year. It's one of the reasons businesses like stability above all else - it literally reduces their stress levels.

Obviously, one can say it's more 'artificial' than trying to keep a household going on minimum wage, but it's quite real.

I think you are referring to middle management. Further up you simply delegate and make other accountable. The trick is to minimise personal responsibility.

Don't women have a longer life expectancy in most cultures, cf? And don't most outlive their husbands anyway?

Women work differently to men and I would say that they are far more productive and carry more responsibility than most men do. Women multitask, men don't and get stressed at the thought of doing two things at once. By rights we should be dead at 35. Men are wussies and women get on with it.

*tiptoes away quietly and awaits responses*

Kate P wrote:

Don't women have a longer life expectancy in most cultures, cf? And don't most outlive their husbands anyway?

Women work differently to men and I would say that they are far more productive and carry more responsibility than most men do. Women multitask, men don't and get stressed at the thought of doing two things at once. By rights we should be dead at 35. Men are wussies and women get on with it.

*tiptoes away quietly and awaits responses*

Life expectancy difference varies from 7-8 years longer life for women in the "developed" world down to 1 year longer in South Asia. What this doesn't account for is the large amount of female infanticide that takes place. In Zimbabwe average life expectancy is 34 for women and 37 for men.
This would tend to suggest that women have benefitted more from increased wealth in a society than do men. There have been sharp decreases in life expectancy for men and women in some parts of the world. There was a very sharp decrease in male life expectancy in the Russian Federation and Latvia after the end of the soviet system. The World Bank put it down to inflation, reduced incomes and "unhealthy lifestyles" - drink and tobacco. Increased drinking and smoking by women in developed countries is likely to see an end to most of the life expectancy advantage they have had over the last 100 years.

http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/english/topics/gender/statistics.htm

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/MMAH-7D94WJ?OpenDocument

Kate P wrote:

Women work differently to men and I would say that they are far more productive and carry more responsibility than most men do. Women multitask, men don't and get stressed at the thought of doing two things at once. By rights we should be dead at 35. Men are wussies and women get on with it.

Multitask? This is all I ever hear - multitask? What is that? Handing me a fax while one chats to one's friend (just been dumped - very distraught) on the mobile?

Yes. Whilst preparing shopping list on one side of brain and devising way of doing down boss on the other.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

Kate P wrote:

Women work differently to men and I would say that they are far more productive and carry more responsibility than most men do. Women multitask, men don't and get stressed at the thought of doing two things at once. By rights we should be dead at 35. Men are wussies and women get on with it.

Multitask? This is all I ever hear - multitask? What is that? Handing me a fax while one chats to one's friend (just been dumped - very distraught) on the mobile?

It is indeed a concept beyond the ken of many of your species - you can console yourself in the knowledge that you are not alone...

Kate P wrote:

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

Kate P wrote:

Women work differently to men and I would say that they are far more productive and carry more responsibility than most men do. Women multitask, men don't and get stressed at the thought of doing two things at once. By rights we should be dead at 35. Men are wussies and women get on with it.

Multitask? This is all I ever hear - multitask? What is that? Handing me a fax while one chats to one's friend (just been dumped - very distraught) on the mobile?

It is indeed a concept beyond the ken of many of your species - you can console yourself in the knowledge that you are not alone...

Maximum I ever managed was successfully talking on mobile (client), landline (client), and Skype phone (family member) while also conducting 2 Skype chat sessions (client and friend), answering email (client), and feeding daughter (while fending off her attempts to reach keyboard). Unfortunately, after about 3 minutes, all going well, my wife asked me something, and that being the eighth thing, it all unravelled.

ibis wrote:

Kate P wrote:

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

Kate P wrote:

Women work differently to men and I would say that they are far more productive and carry more responsibility than most men do. Women multitask, men don't and get stressed at the thought of doing two things at once. By rights we should be dead at 35. Men are wussies and women get on with it.

Multitask? This is all I ever hear - multitask? What is that? Handing me a fax while one chats to one's friend (just been dumped - very distraught) on the mobile?

It is indeed a concept beyond the ken of many of your species - you can console yourself in the knowledge that you are not alone...

Maximum I ever managed was successfully talking on mobile (client), landline (client), and Skype phone (family member) while also conducting 2 Skype chat sessions (client and friend), answering email (client), and feeding daughter (while fending off her attempts to reach keyboard). Unfortunately, after about 3 minutes, all going well, my wife asked me something, and that being the eighth thing, it all unravelled.

That, ibis, is impressive.

Name a female train spotter or a female with a fine collection of Victorian stamps. Let us widen it a bit; how many people know females who get obsessed about how many votes SF got in 'the back end of no where' in, well pick any year or the scoring record of a baseball team in the 1950s. Or even the number of troops at Waterloo or in the trenches of WW1.

These sort of perversions are decidedly male and in my opinion this attitude is why men occasionally excel. Whilst females have their feet in the here and now multitasking over the Sunday lunch, the obsessive males are down in the den totally focusses on some interest be it fishing or string theory.

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

ibis wrote:

Kate P wrote:

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

Kate P wrote:

Women work differently to men and I would say that they are far more productive and carry more responsibility than most men do. Women multitask, men don't and get stressed at the thought of doing two things at once. By rights we should be dead at 35. Men are wussies and women get on with it.

Multitask? This is all I ever hear - multitask? What is that? Handing me a fax while one chats to one's friend (just been dumped - very distraught) on the mobile?

It is indeed a concept beyond the ken of many of your species - you can console yourself in the knowledge that you are not alone...

Maximum I ever managed was successfully talking on mobile (client), landline (client), and Skype phone (family member) while also conducting 2 Skype chat sessions (client and friend), answering email (client), and feeding daughter (while fending off her attempts to reach keyboard). Unfortunately, after about 3 minutes, all going well, my wife asked me something, and that being the eighth thing, it all unravelled.

That, ibis, is impressive.

Be honest, my AI friend, you were plugged in at the time - weren't you, ibis?

May have been plugged in, but from what Ibis says, the fuse blew.

cactus flower wrote:

May have been plugged in, but from what Ibis says, the fuse blew.

More like a trip switch. Funny thing is, though, that my daughter appears to occupy a permanent attention channel, even when she's not there. Spooky, huh?

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

May have been plugged in, but from what Ibis says, the fuse blew.

More like a trip switch. Funny thing is, though, that my daughter appears to occupy a permanent attention channel, even when she's not there. Spooky, huh?

I don't know how old she is, but they go through a phase of being so very there. Dependent and at the same time dominant.

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

May have been plugged in, but from what Ibis says, the fuse blew.

More like a trip switch. Funny thing is, though, that my daughter appears to occupy a permanent attention channel, even when she's not there. Spooky, huh?

I don't know how old she is, but they go through a phase of being so very there. Dependent and at the same time dominant.

Four, since July. That may well be the age you're thinking of...