IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v46y1998i11p1417-1424.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gender, work roles and psychosocial work characteristics as determinants of health

Author

Listed:
  • Matthews, Sharon
  • Hertzman, Clyde
  • Ostry, Aleck
  • Power, Chris

Abstract

This paper aims to identify gender similarities and differences in psychosocial work characteristics for those in and out of paid employment, to inform research on possible health-related effects. Specifically five questions are addressed: do women report poorer work characteristics than men; are gender differences related to specific characteristics; do work characteristics differ between full- and part-time women workers and between those in paid and unpaid work; are socio-economic gradients in work characteristics similar for men and women; and, if there are gradients, do they differ between women in paid and unpaid work? Analyses are based on the 33Â year follow-up of the 1958 British birth cohort. Four psychosocial work characteristics were examined: learning opportunities, monotony, pace of work, and flexibility of breaks. Women reported more negative work characteristics than men, primarily because of differences in learning opportunities (26% lacked opportunity compared with 13% of men) and monotonous work (47 and 31% respectively). Women in full-time employment reported fewer negative characteristics (27%) than part-time (39%) or home-workers (36%). Home-workers had fewer opportunities for learning (36%) and greater monotony (49%) than paid workers (21 and 22% respectively), however fewer home-workers reported inability to control the work pace (11% compared to 23%) and inflexibility of breaks (21% compared to 47%). Socio-economic gradients in work characteristics were similar among men and women, except for flexibility of break times. A socio-economic gradient in work characteristics was found for full- and part-time workers, but not among home-workers. Differences in self reported health were also examined: a social gradient was found for all employment status groups, being strongest for home-workers despite the absence of a gradient in negative work characteristics. In conclusion, these marked gender differences in psychosocial work characteristics need to be considered in future research on work and health.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthews, Sharon & Hertzman, Clyde & Ostry, Aleck & Power, Chris, 1998. "Gender, work roles and psychosocial work characteristics as determinants of health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 46(11), pages 1417-1424, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:46:y:1998:i:11:p:1417-1424
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(97)10141-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Max Henderson & Charlotte Clark & Stephen Stansfeld & Matthew Hotopf, 2012. "A Lifecourse Approach to Long-Term Sickness Absence—A Cohort Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(5), pages 1-7, May.
    2. Trevor Peckham & Noah Seixas & A. B. de Castro & Anjum Hajat, 2022. "Do Different Patterns of Employment Quality Contribute to Gender Health Inequities in the U.S.? A Cross-Sectional Mediation Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(18), pages 1-18, September.
    3. Barron, David Nicholas & West, Elizabeth, 2007. "The emotional costs of caring incurred by men and women in the British labour market," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(10), pages 2160-2171, November.
    4. Sperlich, Stefanie & Geyer, Siegfried, 2015. "The mediating effect of effort-reward imbalance in household and family work on the relationship between education and women's health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 58-65.
    5. Li, Jian & Yang, Wenjie & Cho, Sung-il, 2006. "Gender differences in job strain, effort-reward imbalance, and health functioning among Chinese physicians," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(5), pages 1066-1077, March.
    6. Stefanie Sperlich & Siegfried Geyer, 2015. "The impact of social and family-related factors on women’s stress experience in household and family work," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 60(3), pages 375-387, March.
    7. Kim, Il-Ho & Muntaner, Carles & Khang, Young-Ho & Paek, Domyung & Cho, Sung-Il, 2006. "The relationship between nonstandard working and mental health in a representative sample of the South Korean population," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 566-574, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:46:y:1998:i:11:p:1417-1424. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.