Study: Women say they have to work harder

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Many women joke that they "must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good" but two U.S. researchers said that may actually be true.

Sociologists Elizabeth Gorman of the University of Virginia and Julie Kmec of Washington State University, analyzed five different surveys given from 1977 to 2001, to different groups of men and women in Britain and the United States.

The researchers said that no matter how they sliced the data and controlled certain variables, a gender gap persisted and that over time women were significantly more likely to say they strongly agreed or agreed that they have to work harder than men.

"We know that people give lower marks to an essay, a painting or a resume when it has a woman's name on it," Gorman said in a statement. "And when a man and a woman work together on a project, people assume the man contributed more than the woman did. Even when a woman's work is indisputably excellent, people don't believe she's good -- they think she got lucky."

The study, published in December issue of the journal Gender and Society, said that between men and women who performed the same amount of child care and housework, women were still more likely to say their jobs required them to work very hard.