I work in retail, and we have more stores than Wal-Mart (but far fewer employees). Those hours for a store manager seem completely reasonable to me, and are in line with the industry and my own company. And most of our store managers are women.
I think that most companies who force employees to work overtime use wage slaves who feel they have no choice lest they loose their job.
An example: years ago I worked in a 24/7 health care facility. The morning medical staff, without fail, came in early in order to ensure that the work was done in time for the morning rush that started about 7am. The scheduled clock-in time was 6am, however that simply did not give the employees enough time to get the facility ready, on top of shift report and whatnot. So they came in early, and simply clocked in at six, after they had been working for 20 minutes or so. New employees learned very quickly that arriving at six meant you were behind on your work all day.
Now the corporate nazis could have remedied this by hiring another employee or two, or simply moving the shift up by half an hour. Thy didn’t, and occasionally reminded us that, if we were doing our jobs correctly, we wouldn’t need the extra time. But by god you better have your work done. And heaven help you if you have any overtime. Any employee with so little as 15 min over overtime in a shift had to write a report explaining the circumstances. For every circumstance. Grrrrrrrrrrr…
The employees who came in early, gave their extra time to ensure the building was presentable and ready for a normal day of running their asses off, were without fail low hourly wage workers. It took no experience to do the job and it was obvious they were replaceable… so they didn’t fight it. they did what they had to do to keep their job in a profit-comes-first, screw the little guy work environment. I think that most people who work overtime w/o getting paid aren’t doing it because they are told to do so in clear language (in fact most are probably told not to do it), but because there is an understanding of what is required to keep their job.
My school district is (was) notorious for this. Our contract hours were 7:30am to 3:30pm but we were required many times to work after those hours unpaid because we were “salaried”.