Measurement design and the apparent inactivity of women in urban Chile​

Imagine you are trying to measure how much "energy" a person burns in a day. In the world of health science, this is often tracked using a unit called a MET-hour, which is basically a score for how hard your body is working. For decades, health experts have been looking at these scores to see if people are getting enough exercise. They usually focus on the "fun" stuff: running in the park, playing soccer, or hitting the gym. This is like a video game that only counts points when you jump over a dragon, but ignores the points you get for carrying heavy boxes or walking the dog.

The big question this paper tackles is: What happens if we change the rules of the game? What if we stop ignoring the hard work people do just to keep their homes running? We know that women often spend a lot of time cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children or elderly relatives. If a health survey only looks at "leisure exercise," it might accidentally make it look like women are lazy or inactive, simply because their energy is being spent on invisible chores instead of sports. This study asks if the "gap" between men and women in physical activity is real, or if it's just a trick of the measuring tape.

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The Great Energy Scorecard Swap

Think of physical activity like a bank account where you earn "energy credits." For a long time, the bank tellers (health researchers) have only been counting the credits you earn from "leisure time"—the stuff you choose to do for fun, like jogging or dancing. If you look at the bank statement using only those credits, the story looks very lopsided. In this study of nearly 28,500 people in Chile, the tellers found that men were earning more than twice as many "fun exercise" credits as women. The ratio was 0.44, meaning for every 100 credits a man earned from exercise, a woman only earned 44.

But here is the twist: the bank was ignoring a massive vault of other credits. Women were earning a ton of credits from "unpaid work"—cooking, cleaning, laundry, and caring for others. When the researchers decided to open that vault and add those credits to the total score, the whole story changed.

The Magic of Adding Up the Invisible

The researchers used a special calculator (the 2024 Adult Compendium) to convert hours of housework and caregiving into the same energy units as exercise. They looked at five different areas of life:

1. Leisure Exercise (The fun stuff)
2. Paid Work (Jobs)
3. Unpaid Domestic Work (Cleaning, cooking)
4. Caregiving (Looking after kids or elders)
5. Travel (Walking or biking to get places)

When they added up everything, the gap between men and women almost vanished, though men still held a slight lead.

• Men's Total Score: 16.74 energy credits per day.
• Women's Total Score: 15.02 energy credits per day.

Wait, that's right! When you count the invisible work, men still burned slightly more energy than women on average, but the difference became tiny. The ratio flipped from 0.44 (women doing less than half the exercise work) to 0.90 (women doing 90% of the total work men did). The "gap" wasn't because women were inactive; it was because the measuring tape was blind to their daily labor.

The "WHO Goal" Game

The World Health Organization (WHO) has a goal: you need to earn at least 8.33 energy credits per week from activities that are at least a moderate level of effort. Let's see how many people hit this target under different rules:

• Rule A (Exercise Only): If we only count sports and gym time, only 17.1% of women hit the goal, compared to 29.2% of men. That's a big gap of 12.1 percentage points.
• Rule B (Exercise + Travel): If we add walking or biking to work or school, the gap shrinks. 28.1% of women hit the goal.
• Rule C (Everything): If we count everything—including the cooking, cleaning, and childcare—50.6% of women hit the goal!

By including the invisible work, the gap between men and women meeting the health goal shrank by two-thirds. It went from a huge 12.1-point difference down to just 3.6 points. The study suggests that the "inactive" label on many women is a mistake caused by a narrow view of what counts as activity.

The Poor vs. The Rich: A Surprising Twist

The study also looked at how money changes the story. In the poorest neighborhoods (the lowest income group), the energy scores for men and women were almost identical.

• Men: 13.80 credits
• Women: 13.78 credits

The ratio was 0.998—basically a perfect tie. Why? Because in poorer households, families can't afford to hire help or buy convenience. Women are doing all the heavy lifting at home, which perfectly cancels out the fact that men might be working more paid jobs or playing more sports. The "female deficit" disappears completely in the poorest areas. It's only in wealthier areas, where people can outsource chores or buy leisure time, that the gap reappears.

The "Commuting" Mystery

The researchers also looked at how people move around the city. On the surface, men and women walked or biked the exact same amount (0.43 credits per day). But when they looked at why people were moving, the story split.

• Men were mostly moving for "productive" reasons: going to work or school.
• Women were mostly moving for "reproductive" reasons: shopping, running errands, or taking kids to appointments.

There was one category where women were way ahead: "accompanying others." This is the act of walking with someone else (like a child or an elder) to get them somewhere. Women did this 3.31 times more than men. It's a special kind of travel that is also a form of caregiving, and it was almost entirely a female activity.

The Bottom Line

This paper doesn't say that doing dishes is exactly the same as running a marathon. In fact, the authors are careful to note that the health benefits of "obligatory" work (like cleaning) might be different from "elective" exercise (like sports). Some studies suggest that heavy, repetitive housework doesn't give the same heart-health boost as a brisk walk.

However, the main point is clear: The measurement was wrong. By ignoring the unpaid work that women do disproportionately, health surveys have been creating a fake picture of inactivity. When you count the whole day's work, urban women in Chile are not inactive; they are working just as hard as men (reaching 90% of the total energy expenditure), just in a different way. The "gap" in physical activity is largely a statistical illusion created by a ruler that only measures the fun stuff.