Man and dog take to the waves to cool down at Crab Beach in East Vancouver on July 27, 2009.Simon Hayter
Italian women may want to consider moving to Norway.
An international survey has found that although universally men have more leisure time than women, nowhere was the disparity more flagrant than in Italy, where they unwound for a stellar 80 minutes more a day than women.
Second place was Poland, at 56 minutes more a day. Mexico and Spain tied at third with 52 minutes.
Canadian men spent just 25 minutes more on leisure a day than women, according to the survey, conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which looked at time-use surveys from 18 countries. For Canada, the organization looked at phone interviews conducted with 25,000 people by Statistics Canada in 2005.
At four minutes a day, Norway had the smallest gender gap, followed by New Zealand (15 minutes), Japan (20 minutes) and Sweden (21 minutes).
Over all, Mexicans spent the least amount of time on leisure a day (16 per cent) and Norway the most (27 per cent), compared with 23 per cent in Canada. (The average is 22 per cent.)
The gender gaps may hinge largely on the organization's definition of leisure, described as "time spent free of obligation and necessity," "engaging in enjoyable or pleasurable activities" such as watching TV, reading, playing sports or exercising, attending events and socializing with friends and family.
Strangely, the organization counts sleeping, eating, grooming and errands as personal care, not leisure. When these activities are lumped in with leisure, Canadian men had just four more minutes than women. In Norway, this broader definition left women with 16 more minutes than men daily.
But the survey's greatest skew was likely shopping: It was defined not as leisure, but "unpaid work."