If anything this number is too conservative, since the study looks at just stroke and heart disease. When you start getting into mental health and other less obvious health conditions resulting from overwork, the results are sure to be devastating.
I’m focussing on men because they die 11-18x more than women in all Western countries, but most of those deaths were in worker jobs, and if we focus on the office workers (and WFH candidates), I’m sure the difference is tighter. But still a multiple. So let’s start somewhere:
We love to overwork ourselves to death, sometimes by sexist prejudice (“men are workers!”), sometime by honour (“He died in a battle”), sometimes by ideals (“This startup is the work of my life”), sometimes for money (“Ok we risk high with this robbery, but we might have money in the end”) and often because we have no friends and no other way to be recognized in society.
It’s not a fatality, but I’m a bit lost at where to start.
I think this is already true if they want to be recognized as a career woman right? Otherwise they’re working, but basically expected to quit at any time to bear children.
I'm not sure that's true. It's just the system is often set up with the rule of "overwork or be left behind".
Common work schedule in China these days is "996" or 9am-9pm, six days a week. It's standard across internet companies. ByteDance and Pinduoduo I believe are "11116", i.e. 11am-11pm six days a week.
I don't think anyone actually wants that schedule, honestly.
Yes, it destroys families, it wrecks people's lives, it contributes to screwing up everyone's cardiac and mental health, it drives people to depression and worse. But it's not like you can negotiate with them to work 9am-5pm five days a week for slightly less pay. They don't offer that option.
This isn't really China-specific either. iBankers in NYC do the same or more hours and they also aren't offered a 9-5 option, it's either work all your waking hours or you're fired.
No idea about China though.
This isn't quite what you are referring to, but, back in the days when I had delusions of becoming a college professor, I had always thought I would die in front of a blackboard, with a piece of chalk in my hand.
> I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.
From Bertrand Russell. The full text is a bit longer, but I really like the sentiment behind these words.
> I’m focussing on men because they die 11-18x more than women is all Western countries, but most of those deaths were in worker jobs, and if we include service industry, I’m sure the difference is tighter. But still a multiple.
I think you need to qualify those deaths a bit. On a long enough timeline men and women all day at the same rate. If it's while at work that absolutely makes sense given that women didn't "work" like men did until recently.
Certainly under any and all finite time periods, the rates would differ.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
> I’m focussing on men because they die 11-18x more than women in all Western countries, but most of those deaths were in worker jobs, and if we focus on the office workers (and WFH candidates), I’m sure the difference is tighter. But still a multiple.
I asked that they qualify the deaths - men don't die 11-18x more than women - they die the exact same - 100%. Age range it, provide bounds to that statistic. Because even "while working" doesn't make sense if less women work than men.
Example: In France, there are about 500 deaths at work, 40 are women. It’s getting lower in general but actually increasing for women until before the Covid, as equality makes progress in worker positions.
I don't know if it's actually fair to try and ascribe expected lifetimes to lifestyle when there are some pretty clear biological differences - this strikes me as a sort of Occam's Razor situation.
There was a woman who did immense progress for the miners and factory workers, organizing demonstrations and strikes. But she had never had success trying to attract attention of the number of limbs lost or lives lost. No-one cared than men were severing their bodies at work and living disabled. Then she stated wording it this way:
“When a man dies at work, it’s a WIFE and little CHILDREN who can’t eat.”
Then men started improving safety.
It's not entirely unheard of for men to do things for their family. It's not uncommon for women to do this either. If stereotypes have any accuracy, men tend to be willing to do an awful lot to impress women (e.g. "happy wife, happy life").
I’m pretty sure, currently everyone dies exactly the same amount.
100%
And plenty of kids and women worked in cotton mills with horrendous accident rates when compared to today.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is another example here.
Firstly, your numbers are meaningless without context (we all die eh!?)
More importantly, work might be a small factor but other factors are believed to be more important.
From https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20151001-why-women-live-l... are two points:
Firstly, testosterone has been implicated as the cause: “A few [institutionalised men] were forcibly castrated as part of their ‘treatment’. Like the Korean eunuchs, they too lived for longer than the average inmate – but only if they had been sterilised before the age of 15.”
Secondly: “female chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons also consistently outlive the males of the group”.
Additionally, I have read that women having XX chromosomes and either one or the other X chromosome is active in each cell (a kind of chimerism) which has been though to provide more resiliency.
Edited: made writing clearer.
But I'd actually disagree about gender being the primary drive of this - I'd instead state that the "young" (vaguely defined) tend to be more willing to invest everything singlemindedly compared to the "mature". With an understanding that gender also seems to contribute this but also contributes to maturity with women tending to mature to the idea of having a family at a younger age then men.
One of my many disagreements with feminism is that it has somehow persuaded itself that this is somehow a privilege for men, and not an intolerable and sometimes literally fatal burden.
There are other brands of feminism, of course.
It definitely is a privilege, as a whole. People bring up workplace fatalities, and compare the experience of poor or working-class men vs women in general. The experience of a working class woman in this country is absolutely worse than that of a working class man, but both are very bad, because our country is not built for our working class or poor, regardless of gender.
If you compare women vs men in the same class, men undeniable have privilege.
I don't know why the possibility of "Yes, men encounter unique problems" is met with derision. I'm not dismissing or trying to minimize problems women encounter, and life at the bottom of the socioeconomic heap sucks in general. But men absolutely don't enjoy some sort of privilege there; it's a grind and it will literally consume you unless you can come up with an out regardless of sex or creed. That suckage is gong to be different depending on circumstances, but I will say nobody really cares, good luck, and can you please keep it to yourself in polite company, because it's gross and makes people uncomfortable.
On overwork specifically, fathers are the most likely to work overtime and swap shifts - more so than men without children (and women in general). When it's a choice even other men don't make, it should be obvious even to the most frothy ideologue that there's a unique pressure on fathers in this regard. They're giving something up that literally everyone else finds valuable.