Women don’t enjoy as much leisure time as men, and during the pandemic, it’s been particularly bad. According to the American Time Use Survey, women have nearly an hour less leisure time than men each day.
And sadly, the numbers add up. Women often did three times as much childcare as men during the pandemic.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has been tracking the steady decline of leisure time since the 1970s. North Americans are now spending anywhere from 1.5 to 1.8 times more on paid work than leisure activities, and this loss of leisure is attributed in part to longer work hours and unpaid overtime.
My doctoral research in communication and culture had me interview hundreds of board gamers and game industry professionals who regularly fill their leisure time with gaming — they all said they’d board game more if they had the energy or the time.
