A 50 50 mix of data downloaded from the US Department of Labor and some anecdotal evidenced shared by Justin.
http://justintapp.blogspot.com/2005/10/why-men-make-more-than-women.html
And while I've yet to see statistics on the "urgent conference" or "women's lunch time habits" put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I will concur that I've experienced similar things in my past work history, albeit anecdotally.
Still, I don't know one woman who has come close to matching my longest work day; 42 hours.
Whereas I can name 3 other men who have.
But again, I'm sure this is anecdotal too.
My first year as a graduate student, (in Chemistry, 3 years ago), it was not uncommon to put in the 120 hour day. I called them "extended Mondays" and they were the result of a combination of a delicious mixture of terror and hatred for my surrounding area, desire to put out useful research, and more antacids, black tea, and mountain dew than I really like to think about.
ReplyDeleteI'd get home Saturday morning, crash on the couch letting tivo's goodness wash over me for 48 hours on perched on the interface of wakefulness and comatose, then get up Monday and do it again.
Tragically, in experimental research, the correllation between hours in and useful data out is not always there. But I digress: Women can put in the long hours too, chief.
I think part of maintaning intelligent output is training and background. I was a child-insomniac and spent my undergraduate career on an average of 3 hours/day consisting of the occasional powernap and clusters of time at the end of the week.
ReplyDeleteSuch is life in the sciences, I think.
From a macro economic standpoint the question of "how productive were you" has merit. But there are limiting factors outside your control when you're 20 and putting in that many hours. You're also in academia which is not known for its meritocracy, so even if you did plug away working all those hours, you may not have been awarded what you deserved, nor was your labor used in a capacity that would have been optimally productive (see internships).
ReplyDeleteThis commnet I just made did not make sense for I am tired as hell. I absolve myself of any responsibility fromit.
I didn't mean to indicate that it didn't have merit; I just was approximately as productive toward the end as I was in the beginning.
ReplyDeleteAt this point, I do get paid the same amount regardless of how much I work and what I put out, but more hours mean greater likelyhood of publication--that's where the meritocracy exists in academia--peer review can make or break a scientist and is certainly critical in eventual granting of tenure, which is the gateway to being paid more commensurate with output.
I've had my share of industrial internships (in contract research companies), and while I recognize that the immediate economic gain for, say, Pfizer might have been increased by my coming in early and staying late, the personal gain now seems better here by making me more marketable down the road and the eventual patentablity of revolutionizing technology in my field.
Thursday mornings are full of pipe-dreams.