Abstract
Although the gender gap in sleep time has narrowed significantly in the last decade, middle-aged women between ages 35 and 60 still sleep less than their male counterparts in Korea. This study examines and provides evidence for factors contributing to the gender gap in this age group. Using Korean Time Use Survey (KTUS) data from 2004, 2009 and 2014, we find that middle-aged women’s difficulty in managing work-life balance and traditional role expectations placed upon women are the main causes of the gender gap in sleep time. The decomposition analysis reveals that the improved socioeconomic status and recent changes in familial expectations for women may have helped them sleep more than in the past. However, there remain fundamental differences in attitude and time use patterns between men and women that prevent middle-aged women from getting the same amount of sleep.
Highlights
We live in a 24/7 society where more people control their sleep time and become virtually sleepless in some cases in order to conquer the night [1]
How has the gender gap in sleep time evolved over time? Is convergence occurring? What social process and psychological factors contributed to the gender gap in sleep time amongst middle-aged people during the last 10 years? By answering these questions, we aim to explore potential solutions to narrow the gap and predict how men and women’s sleep experiences may look in the future
Before we test the factors relevant to the gender gap in sleep, we examine how men and women’s sleep hours differ by age and how it changes over the years
Summary
We live in a 24/7 society where more people control their sleep time and become virtually sleepless in some cases in order to conquer the night [1]. Only a limited number of studies so far have investigated how sleep experience varies among different social groups and why [11,12,13,14,15,16]. Some scholars focused on examining a gender gap in sleep experiences, yet their findings have produced mixed results [16]. Some scholars point out that insufficient sleep and daytime drowsiness were more prevalent among women than men [17,18]. A U.K. study argues that women complain more about their sleep than men even though there was little variance in sleep hours by gender [2]. Prior studies done in Asia point to a consistent gender difference in sleep time. Women complained more about their sleep than men and reported fewer sleep hours than men in Korea, Japan and Taiwan [23,24,25,26]
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