Hacker News Reader

Comment by laurent92 | Hacker News Reader

Men tend to be ok with dying at work. I’m exaggerating a bit but historically, we were doing nothing about safety in 1800s until women started working in factories too.

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.

View on HN

Men have "worked" professionally for thousands of years. Women have entered the workforce at the same scale for maybe a few decades now. Give it time and they will be socially expected to kill themselves for the corporate good as well. Equality!

> Give it time and they will be socially expected to kill themselves for the corporate good as well. Equality!

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.

Companies (and therefore politicians) have a huge incentive to push both men and women to work as much as they can, and for smart white men they already spent lots of effort to optimize the hiring pipeline from childhood, so it makes sense to shift the focus on harder to reach demographics.

> We love to overwork ourselves to death

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.

Most countries do not have ‘at-will’ employment though. So you cannot actually be fired for working your stated hours.

No idea about China though.

> Men tend to be ok with dying at work.

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've often said that I intend to work until they carry me out in a box.

I know a guy who said he wouldn't retire because he wanted to die at work and make them clean up his mess for once.

Always reminds me of this:

> 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.

> Men tend to be ok with dying at work. I’m exaggerating a bit but historically, we were doing nothing about safety in 1800s until women started working in factories too.

> 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.

Your argument is “when the human species dies, half the deaths will be men and half the deaths will be women”. That is a silly statement. Life expectancy among men is lower than women in every country except Afghanistan [1]. The necessary imbalance caused is that women spend more of their lives single. Either later in life or some women the entirety of theirs.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

I think it's actually pretty likely that women are just built better than men. I can't even attempt to explain why but it just appears that a lot of ailments that affect men tend to be rather minimized in women after they pass through menopause.

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.

It’s pretty likely we care about women. The modern ad campaign testify a lot of this behavior.

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.

No, they said:

> 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.

At work.

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.

That's because men wok in high risk industries.

Fewer women die in total, than men. This is because roughly 51% of all births are boys, 49% girls.

"On a long enough time line", like infinity?

Certainly under any and all finite time periods, the rates would differ.

Yeah, that's why a claim of 11-18x really needs bounds to have value as well.

An employee of mine used to be a paramedic. He said is was very common to for men to die at their computers w/ their pants around their ankles. I guess that counts as dying while working...

I couldn't be a paramedic. Too much sadness. Being an oncologist has to be brutal, too.

Most people only find it brutal because they're not accustomed to it and like to ignore the sad realities, even in their own lives. Most people can get used to it.

Sort of makes you want to have a watch heart beat linked app that clears your browser history.

Can you elaborate? I don't understand why people die at their computers w/ their pants around their ankles.

They were trying to get off watch porn & tried a little too hard.

By "men", I assume you're switching between "male humans" and "whoever controls society". Yes, society has been happy for male humans to work themselves to death. Maybe it's patriarchy, maybe it's their families who benefit from the resources they bring back.

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").

> they die 11-18x more than women

I’m pretty sure, currently everyone dies exactly the same amount.

100%

cough ever heard of "phossy jaw" which effected match girls in the 19th century

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.

> men die 11-18x more than women in all Western countries

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.

Getting into gender biases is a touchy subject to many but I would highlight that (and this is all generalities, please don't assume this applies to everyone who identifies as this gender) men tend to be a lot better at single task focus while women tend to be a lot better at multi-task focusing. I'm in an extreme camp here as I'm a man with ADHD and thus tend to hyperfocus on tasks (or be unable to latch onto them) to the detriment of other tasks.

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.

Having a family doesn't make men work less. It's more usual for the opposite to happen.

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.

Feminists I know (including myself) consider that the "patriarchal society" is a trap for both gender.

There are other brands of feminism, of course.

> 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.

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.

Seems quite easily deniable to me. Men dominate school dropouts, suicides, prisoners, and the homeless. All of these issues disproportionately affect the working class and other disadvantaged groups, so that strawman can go back in its box for another conversation.

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.

Become a roofer for your entire working life, blow your back and knees out at 45, and tell me that's a privilege. Or maybe tell the overwhelming majority of male homeless they simply squandered it.

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.

I work less with a family. Having to watch the kid means I can't put in extra hours.

Last I looked into this, the whole single focus vs multitasking gender split was a complete urban myth with no scientific background whatsoever. Do you happen to know of any studies to back this?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com