Man-Year
Categories: Metrics
A gender-biased measure of time. It really should be a person-year.
Specifically, the duration measures the amount of time it takes to produce a given unit of work.
Like...let's say you're laminating the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel. To protect it. Not to show off how great laminating is. (And it really is great.) But you know you can carefully do one square inch an hour. Italian union worker doctrine dictates a maximum of 36 hours a week of work, with only 48 weeks a year worked. So...36 times 48, even in Italy, is 1,728. That is, if there were, say, 3,456 inches to be laminate-covered in the Chapel, then it would take two man-years to do it.
Could those man-years overalp, i.e. be done at the same time? Sure. It's not like birthing a baby, where if you had nine women all working hard, it could be done in a month. At least not yet. Check back with us in 20 years.