Who Spends More Time Relaxing, Men or Women?

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In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that the 21st-century workweek would last just 15 hours. Sadly, this prediction has not come to pass. If it's any consolation, however, people are devoting more time to leisure activities.

But who spends more time engaging in leisure pursuits, men or women? A recent paper published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health has an answer.

Researchers at the University of Barcelona in Spain found that men spent a bigger portion of the day engaging in leisure pursuits than women. This was based on a survey of 869 Spanish men and women between the ages of 18 and 24. The researchers asked participants to report the amount of time they devoted to various leisure activities, such as watching television, hobbies, socializing with family and friends, practicing a sport, attending cultural events, or hosting events.

According to the results, men, on average, engaged in approximately 113 minutes of daily leisure activities, while women totaled approximately 101 minutes. (These numbers reflect weekday averages, not weekends.) This might not sound like a big difference, but it adds up over time. At this rate, men spend an extra hour and a half per week, or an additional 70 hours per year, engaging in leisure activities.

There is, however, a catch. When asked to report the satisfaction derived from leisure pursuits, women reported significantly higher levels of satisfaction. In other words, while men have more leisure time than women, women actually enjoy their leisure activities more than men.

The authors speculate this has to do with the fact that women make better decisions about how to spend their leisure time. It may also have to do with the notion that pleasurable experiences become less pleasurable as time wears on.

The scientists then examined how participation in leisure activities relates to one's time perspective. Time perspective, for those not familiar with the term, is a theory in psychology that divides individuals into five personality types based on people's relationship with time. Some people, for instance, tend to live in the past while others are more present-focused or future-oriented.

There is an evaluative component to this theory, too. People who tend to live in the past are divided into two types: past-positive and past-negative. Past-positives generally have nostalgic and positive constructions of past life events, while past-negatives carry an aversive, pessimistic attitude toward the past. Similarly, present-focused individuals are divided into present-hedonists (those who live in the moment and seek immediate pleasures) and present-fatalists (those who tend to express hopelessness about the future). Finally, the fifth group, future-oriented people, are most concerned with achieving goals, delaying rewards, and not wasting time.

The authors highlight two interesting points pertaining to time perspective. First, women tend to exhibit more positive time perspectives than men. That is, they are less likely to be of the past-negative or present-fatalist type. Second, more leisure time is associated with higher levels of past-negative perspectives and lower levels of past-positive perspectives. In other words, too much leisure might not be a good thing, and maybe it is women who have figured this out.