Men wash their hands much less often than women and that matters more than ever
soap and warm water for 20 seconds -- along with staying home and standing six feet apart from others -- is the best weapon we have against the novel coronavirus that has infected almost 800,000 people around the world.
However, there's one big yet little discussed difference when it comes to this essential personal hygiene habit: Women are hands down better handwashers than men.

Years Researchers have had to come up with clever ways to collect this data, since most people will tell you that they think handwashing after using the bathroom is important. That's even if they don't actually do it.  surveys, observations and research have found that women are more likely to wash their hands, use soap and scrub for a longer period of time than men after using the restroom. However, there's still a surprisingly large portion of both sexes who don't wash their hands at all.

Researchers have had to come up with clever ways to collect this data, since most people will tell you that they think handwashing after using the bathroom is important. That's even if they don't actually do it.

Carl Borchgrevink, director of the School of Hospitality at Michigan State University in East Lansing, takes this kind of survey data with a pinch of salt.

"If you're at a restroom at an airport, for example, and when you come out someone [asks] you 'Did you wash your hands?' And what are you going to say? Yes, of course," said Borchgrevink.
When researchers only ask about people's handwashing habits, "we found that the data that people were reporting seemed to be too high," he said.

To dig deeper into what people really do after using the bathroom,  Borchgrevink tasked 12 research assistants at Michigan State University with the job of surreptitiously hanging out in four different restrooms on and off campus to record what 3,749 men and women actually did. The results of the 2013 study were shocking to the researchers.

Some 15% of men didn't wash their hands at all, compared with 7% of women. When they did wash their hands, only 50% of men used soap, compared with 78% of women.


Overall, only 5% of people who used the bathroom washed their hands long enough to kill the germs that can cause infections.