Women Are Lazier Than Men

Next time you call your husband/boyfriend a lazy bum for sitting on the couch watching football all weekend, be prepared. He might cite a new study recently published in the medical journal The Lancet that has found that women are lazier than men. Yes, you are allegedly lazier than that sloth who hasn’t moved in two hours except to down beer.

The study, whose purpose was to provide data to help policymakers develop disease prevention programs, looked at physical activity levels of adults (15 years or older) from 122 countries and for adolescents from 105 countries. Using self-reported accounts of physical activity, the study found that, worldwide, 33.9 percent of women are inactive while only 27.9 percent of men are inactive. In the U.S., the gap is even worse: 47.4% of women are inactive; 33.5% of men are inactive.  Inactivity was defined as failing to engage in 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on at least five days every week or 20 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity on at least three days every week.

Another key finding was that “within every age group, men are more likely to participate in vigorous-intensity physical activity than are women.” So, maybe those pick-up basketball games and bad attempts at rugby aren’t such a waste of time after all.  He’ll probably rub that little piece of data in your face, too.

While this study should not have bearing on your level of ambition or drive to succeed, it may suggest that we could walk more and drive less and try and keep up with the guy on the next treadmill at the gym.