Cerian Screen (PJ, 18/25 August 2012, p179) is right to question The Journal's assertion (PJ, 23 June 2012, p737) that women tend to work less due to their domestic responsibilities. So far as we can see, the actual evidence for the claim is older than it seems at first sight, but repeated citation has given the impression that the evidence is current. The most frequently used article to support the claim seems to be the July 2011 Centre for Workforce Intelligence report entitled "Workforce risks and opportunities: pharmacy". But this cites the source of its claim as a 2008 report from the Centre for Pharmacy Workforce Studies. This 2008 report, based on data in a voluntary census conducted by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in that year, acknowledges that the raw data collected are not as reliable as they might be, due to low rates of submission of employment information by young pharmacists and higher response rates to the census by female pharmacists than by male ones. When the 2011 report states that there is evidence of a "trend for part time, flexible, and portfolio working", it should be noted that it refers to a trend over the years leading up to 2008. It is also worth noting that the 2008 report does not even hint that today's 25-year-olds will follow the same work patterns as today's 45-year-olds, because no evidence is available to make such predictions.
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