Professor Man-Yee Kan, University of Oxford
Department of Sociology (42-43 Park End Street) or MS Teams
Please join either in person or online. For in-person attendees, the talk will be preceded by a light lunch at 12.15pm.
Please email comms@sociology.ox.ac.uk with any questions.
Time is arguably the most valuable resource, with far-reaching implications for inequality, health, and well-being. This talk examines gender gaps in leisure time using time-diary data from 14 East Asian and Western societies—China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Spain, Italy, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, and Norway—collected between 2000 and 2021.
We analyse how gender differences in leisure—such as sport, socialising, media use, and reading—evolve across the life course (ages 16–75). The results show persistent inequalities: men consistently enjoy more leisure time than women, with gaps evident at all ages. These disparities are largest in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Spain, and Italy, and smallest in the Nordic countries.
Gender differences are observed in both active (e.g. sport, socialising) and passive (e.g. television, internet use) leisure. Strikingly, the gaps are widest at weekends, when constraints from paid work are lowest.
