Objective: Sufficient sleep is essential for health and working capacity. Shorter sleep duration on workdays is often compensated by sleeping longer during leisure days. Gender dissimilarities in sleep quality are acknowledged. Our aim was to study the less known gender differences in sleep duration.

Methods: A population based study with a total of 1049 middle-aged regularly working women (n = 524) and men (n = 525). A questionnaire of sleep durations on workdays and leisure days, preferred sleep duration, with health-related quality of life and health behavior.

Results: Women slept 14 min longer on workdays (p < 0.002) and 27 min longer on leisure days (p < 0.002) and had 32 min longer preferred sleep duration (p < 0.001) than men. Compared to workdays, women slept 1 h 57 minutes longer and men 1 h 42 min longer on leisure days (gender p < 0.001). On workdays, both women and men slept less than their preferred sleep duration and again, with more extensive difference in women (gender-interaction p < 0.001). On leisure days the excessive sleep time did not differ between genders (p = 0.346). None of the explanatory variables explained the gender differences in sleep durations.

Conclusions: Sleep loss on workdays is presumably more pronounced in women, since despite their longer sleep on workdays, the gender differences persist in both sleep duration on leisure days and in preferred sleep duration.