Study Says Women Need More Sleep Than Men But Do They Actually Get It?

It’s 11pm in the Sharma household. The husband and wife are watching television after a long, tiring day. The kids are asleep. After a while, the husband yawns and says, “I’m sleepy.” The wife says, “me too.” The husband goes to the bedroom, brushes his teeth, lies down on the bed and within minutes, there’s snoring.

The wife first goes to the kitchen. She clears up the dirty dishes, puts the leftovers into the refrigerator. She prepares for the next day’s tiffin boxes and breakfast. She then dries the last of the laundry in the washing machine, keeps the school uniforms ready, tidies the living room, shuts the windows and gets ready for bed.

By the time she’s fast asleep, it’s 12am. She has to be up by 5.30 am the next day. This, we believe is quite how the typical Indian mum’s night time ritual looks like before she finally can sleep.

According to a study by Britain’s leading sleep science expert, women need twenty more minutes of sleep than men on an average. The researcher pointed that women tend to multitask and use more of their actual brain than men leading to a greater need for sleep. So essentially, the more you use your brain during the day, the more it needs to rest while you are asleep.

We definitely agree with the, ‘women tend to multi-task and use more of their actual brain’ bit. So yes, we agree that women need more time in dreamland than their male counterparts. But the question is, “do they get it?”

We scream about sharing the load, equal parenting, equal responsibility in a marriage blah blah. But we are still a long way from making these terms a reality. Till today, managing the house, the kitchen and raising kids is still largely considered a woman’s job. So when will she ever get those 20 extra minutes of sleep when there is so much to do?

We think it’s high time that children are taught to share and take up responsibility for their homes at an early age irrespective of their gender. It’s only then that women can probably have the luxury of hitting the snooze button of their alarm more often. What do you say?

Name changed to protect identity.

Source: sleepfoundation

Source of banner image: health.com

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