highlights and discusses the disparity in available leisure time for men compared to women in America. The article notes that women on average have just under five hours of leisure or free time per day versus five and a half hours free time per day for men (Pinsker 2019, para 1). Many men are utilising this half hour difference to watch television. Framed through the feminist and conflict paradigms, the author poses that with historical social and cultural shifts, women are participating more in the paid work force in the public realm however unpaid work in the private realm still largely remains an ideological responsibility assumed of women (Pinsker 2019, para.5). This is a key explanatory reason as to the imbalance of leisure time between sexes. Apart from devoting additional time to housework and child care, women are also noted to spend more time on ‘personal care’ which includes washing and grooming activities (Pinsker 2019, para. 4). These patterns in time-use indicate that women have greater restrictions around the availability and use of leisure time and that these restrictions stem from patriarchal power relations: “. . . men are able to exercise greater preference in their time use choices . . . because they have [more] power than women” (Sayer 2012, cited in Pinsker 2019, para. 9). For example, I would argue that the additional time women spend on personal care is influenced by gendered norms as there are still expectations for women to embody a certain type of appearance and aesthetic, and these expectations are enforced more harshly on women than on men. The article interestingly highlights and demonstrates the notion of power of preference for time use (Pinsker 2019, para. 13): men have the choice to participate in housework if they wanted to, but instead men exercise their power to preference spending their leisure time not on household maintenance or child care related activities, but on watching television and other more ‘convenient’ (ibid.) leisure acts.
