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Workplace Experiment Finds That Women Work Longer and Harder than Men

By Christine Hsu | Update Date: Feb 28, 2013 01:56 PM EST

Female employees work harder and longer than male employees, according to new research by independent consultant group the Ponemon Institute.

Researchers found that among the participants that took part in the experiments across the U.S., female participants consistently worked for a longer period of time than their male colleagues during a ten-minute experiment, according to the Daily Mail.

What's more, researchers found that men are even less productive than their female counterparts when women are around.

Researchers said that the study was initially designed to observe how 3M privacy filters, thin panels that fit onto a monitor and allows only the user to view their computer screen, affected productivity in the workplace.

However, the experiments ended up revealing that with or without the privacy filter, women were significantly more productive than men in the workplace.

The study consisted of 274 participants.  Participants worked in a variety of industries like financial services, consumer products, education, health care and energy.  Around 53 percent of the participants were women and 47 percent were men.

Researchers found that when working with a privacy filter, women worked 4.9 minutes during a ten-minute experimental trial while men worked 4.3 minutes.

With the privacy filter, women worked 2.5 minutes during ten minutes while men worked for just 2.1 minutes during the ten-minute experiments.

Compared to men, the study found that not only did women work longer, they also to work harder.

When participants were given the opportunity to walk away during an experiment-waiting period, only 38 percent of women left the desk compared to 52 percent of men.

Unsurprisingly, researchers found that men were even less productive if a woman was around.

Researchers explained that when the experimenter and the participant were both male, the average time worked was 3.6 minutes.  When both were female, productivity rose to four minutes.  However, when the experiment was female and the participant was male, the time worked dropped to only 2.8 minutes, according to the new study.

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