In a packed day with numerous demands on your attention and resources, you may be tempted to challenge time’s winged chariot by attempting to do several things at once. If you are a young woman, do not do this. Resist the lure of multitasking, even though you have been repeatedly told that you excel at being able to undertake more than one activity at a time without your brain exploding by those with a vested interest in making you do stuff for them.
Do not, at all costs, even contemplate such ambitious behaviour anywhere near a staircase, for a scientific study published last week entitled Risky Behavior During Stair Descent for Young Adults: Differences in Men Versus Women, has shown that a lady is more likely to take a tumble than a gentleman, and far more likely to do herself an injury in the process.
We are back in the arena of minutely detailed scientific research that we had no idea we needed until its breathtaking results shake our world to its core, or, more problematically, confirm what some people already believed. The Daily Mail was quick to wag the finger – “Multi-tasking could be to blame for young women falling down the stairs” – and the Telegraph put it even more concisely: “Women are more prone to falling down the stairs than men because they are often chatting”. A good day, in other words, for chauvinists.
The study covertly monitored 2,400 young people as they descended two staircases and assessed their tendency to indulge in risky behaviour. Women, it emerged, demonstrated a positively devil-may-care attitude, brazenly talking to people, carrying items, and wearing inappropriate footwear, confident that they might survive unscathed. Big mistake. Even though men were more likely to skip steps, women’s famed capacity for nattering on with armfuls of their belongings while wearing their Jimmy Choos (these precise details supplied by the author’s own imagination) marked them down as staircase accidents waiting to happen.
Questions arise. Were women wearing treacherous shoes – not merely heels, but sandals and sliders featured – because they have spent so long being bombarded with images of high-performing role models tripping lightly from boardroom to nightclub in such flimsy footwear? This is outwith the study’s remit. Were they carrying handbags because they have been relentlessly conditioned to be able to provide tissues, spare pens, a sustaining snack and a full change of outfit at a moment’s notice? This is also outwith the remit.
We will add it to our list of things to worry about. But I would like to see a different study, one that is relocated to a domestic setting and focused on the journey upwards. Here, I am happy to allow a gender stereotype to persist unchallenged: that most hopeful of all household phenomena, the foot-of-stair pile. In it you will find, variously: clean socks, bathroom cleaning products, a couple of novels, reading glasses, a stack of folded towels, a hammer, a new bottle of shampoo, a weighted blanket and a cat. There it lies, burgeoning throughout the day, mutely hopeful that someone will transport it upwards and distribute its elements to their rightful places. There it lies, stepped over and around by that half of the population who knows that stairs require vigilance, until the other half, already burdened with belongings and wearing six-inch mules, finally caves in and lumps it into their weary, multitasking arms. Pay attention, young women: you take things upstairs once, and you’ll be doing it for the rest of your lives.
• Alex Clark writes for the Guardian and the Observer
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