Turkmenistan. While serious violations of religious freedom continued in Turkmenistan, the Government made progress in some areas. Government respect for religious freedom, both from a legislative perspective and in practice, improved during the period covered by this report. However, the Government continued to monitor all forms of religious expression. All groups must register in order to gain legal status with the Government. Until recently, the only religions that were registered successfully were Sunni Islam and Russian Orthodox Christianity, which are controlled by the Government; by the end of the reporting period, four minority religious groups had been registered. The March amendments to the law on religious organizations and subsequent Presidential decrees have enabled the Ministry of Justice to facilitate registration of some religious congregations and have engendered a noticeable reduction in harassment of minority congregations. The Government also repealed some criminal penalties for unauthorized religious activity. The President amnestied six members of Jehovah's Witnesses serving prison sentences for conscientious objection to military service. There is much to absorb here. The Religious Freedom Report is by its nature a qualitative report with an inevitably preachy tone, but another fascinating report out this week is just the facts, ma'am: the Department of Labor's American Time Use Survey:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today that in 2003:

--On the days that they worked, employed men worked about an hour more than employed women--8.0 versus 7.1 hours.

--Employed adult women (18 years and over) spent about an hour more per dday than employed adult men doing household activities and caring for household members.

--On days that they worked, about 1 in 5 employed persons did some or all of their work at home.

--Adults in households without children spent about 1.4 hours more per day engaged in leisure and sports activities than those with children.

....The "Average Day"

On an "average day" in 2003, persons in the U.S. age 15 and over slept about 8.6 hours, spent 5.1 hours doing leisure and sports activities, worked for 3.7 hours, and spent 1.8 hours doing household activities. The remaining 4.8 hours were spent in a variety of other activities, including eating and drinking, attending school, and shopping. The average day measures for the entire population reflect the average distribution of time across all persons, whether or not each person engaged in that activity on their diary day. (See table 1.)

Average day measures for the entire population provide a mechanism for seeing the overall distribution of time allocation for society as a whole, but other measures provide additional insights. Many activities typically are not done on a daily basis, and some activities only are done by a subset of the population. For example, only 44 percent of all persons 15 years and over reported working on an average day because some were not employed and others were employed but did not work on their diary day. For this reason, some of the analysis that follows uses time-use estimates that are restricted to specific population groups, such as employed persons or adults in households with children.

Working (by Employed Persons)

--Employed persons worked 7.6 hours on average on the days that they worked. Work hours were longer on weekdays than on weekend days--7.9 versus 5.7 hours. (See table 4.)

--Many more people worked on weekdays than on weekend days. About 82 percent of employed persons worked on an average weekday, compared with 33 percent on an average weekend day. (See table 4.)

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