University of Michigan sociologist Sarah Burgard examined daily diaries kept by 56,149 people who took part in the Labor Department’s American Time Use Survey. Writing in American Sociological Review, she reports that women sleep an average of 11 minutes longer per night than men, a gap that persists throughout life. But it seems women earn those extra z’s, and then some. Men spend, on average, 35 more minutes a day than women pursuing leisure activities. Worse, women are more likely to have their sleep interrupted by another person needing their care, such as a sick child. Talk about an exhausting gender gap.
Whither Cultural Critics?
With access to books, movies, and television more open than ever, and research showing that crowdsourcing leads to biases, cultural criticism needs to change.
