Overtime at work equals less exercise, unless you’re a man

While Strazdins is yet to test a large enough sample of same-sex couples to draw any conclusions, she says the results might be different for that group. “This is very much a heterosexual couple gender type dynamic that’s going on,” she says. “It would be interesting to find out how it would change if the genders were different.”

The findings are not surprising to Lyn Craig, a professor of sociology and social policy at the University of Melbourne, who says they reflect previous studies that found men’s leisure is not sacrificed to unpaid work and care as much as a mother’s is.

“[Men] might be going to the gym, as Strazdins suggested, [or] they could be going for drinks and networking after work, but their ability to keep for themselves some discretionary time rather than translating it straight into the home is quite hard to shift,” she says.

Strazdins says the findings point to a need to take gender inequality “much more seriously”. And on top of levelling out paid and unpaid work, she says there needs to be a cap on working hours.

“There is currently a global exercise drought, and this is pushing huge disease burdens from the cardiovascular to the cognitive,” says Strazdins. “We need to cap work hours on the job, and even the sharing of care hours in the home – for men and women to both have enough time for staying healthy.”

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Despite Australia having a national standard working week of 38 hours, Strazdins says there are people working beyond it. “About a quarter of our workforce works past that [standard].”

Strazdins says it’s time for Australia to follow in the steps of countries including Sweden, Denmark and Finland, capping work hours and putting in a more generous paternity leave policy. “You’ll see better health, child wellbeing, educational and gender equality outcomes.”

On an individual level, Strazdins’s advice to men is to be courageous and reduce their work hours.

“I know it’s hard,” she says. “I know that men get penalised when they try and shift their time towards family away from work. [But] I would encourage men to take courageous steps to reduce their working hours and become more connected with their own families.”

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As Strazdins points out, longer work hours and the sacrifices being made are “not just a cost to women’s health.” The World Health Organisation has stated that working more than 55 hours a week is a serious health hazard.

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