Women between the ages of 35 and 54 experience significantly higher levels of stress than men of the same age and researchers are starting to take notice. They are starting to investigate the factors that go into creating this disparity and have already made progress in determining some of its root causes. Read on to start exploring the reasons why modern women report higher levels of stress than men and what can be done to change that.
Modern Women Have a Lot on Their Plates
Not too long ago, nuclear families were fairly consistently composed of a primary breadwinner, the husband, and a primary caretaker and homemaker, the wife. Women at this time had to juggle caring for children and elderly parents, providing for their husbands, and ensuring that everything went smoothly at home. Today, most women still perform all of these tasks, but they also work full-time jobs, often in highly competitive fields.
No one is arguing that women’s entry into the traditionally male workforce is not a positive thing for everyone. However, men have not made the same strides into traditionally female roles. It is the one-sided nature of modern gender role changes that many researchers believe has created a huge divide in stress levels between men and women. This has also driven consumer spending in unexpected ways, even creating an increase in female consumers looking into finding cbd edibles to help them cope with stress.
Who Is Affected?
Women across all age groups report higher levels of stress than their male counterparts. Researchers with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) office have reported that men in all three age categories under investigation experience significantly lower rates of work-related stress, while women, especially those in the 35-44 and 45-54 age groups, reported significantly higher rates of stress-related to their jobs.
According to the HSE’s research, 590 out of every 100,000 male workers reported stress, while 920 women in the same position reported high-stress levels. That means female workers are a full one and a half times more likely to experience significant stress than their male counterparts. But we don’t have to burden the stress alone, check top vendors for great products to help us deal with stress.
The fact that the number of female participants self-reporting extreme stress grows as the demographics get older indicates a relevant trend. As women age, they take on more family and household responsibilities. Those in the 35-44 age group are more likely to be primary caretakers for children in addition to managing households, and women ages 45-54 are more likely to have responsibilities for caring for aging parents thrown into the mix on top of their existing responsibilities. That’s a lot for anyone to take, but it’s not the only reason women experience higher levels of work-related stress.
Women Are Achieving Great Careers
Despite having to juggle primary responsibilities for home and family life alongside their careers, women over the last 50 years have achieved incredible things in the workforce. They’ve proven to be just as adept as men at fulfilling traditionally male roles and have done so even in the face of rampant discrimination and far too many instances of unfair work-life balance. Women have reported being under a lot of external pressure at work as a result of their other responsibilities, which would cause anyone to experience elevated levels of stress.
Those women with children experience a good deal of tension between pursuing careers and meeting society’s expectations for hands-on mothers. They must divide time between providing primary care for their children, ensuring they have good childhoods that will set them up for success in their own lives, and meeting deadlines that don’t offer much flexibility. Working mothers responsible for bringing home some or all of the household’s paychecks are still expected to live up to feminine ideals of hands-on motherhood and, if they can’t manage both, society judges them harshly.
Even women without children experience greater levels of stress in the workplace as a result of society’s expectations. Women must compete in many arenas extending well beyond their work performance. They must live up to feminine ideals of beauty, invest the majority of the emotional labor required to maintain their primary relationships and friendships, and do it all while maintaining emotional and social standards much higher than those placed on men. When they can’t, they undergo social criticism, self-doubt, and feelings of failure that can all contribute to stress.
Stress Caused by Workload
The research performed by the HSE cites stress caused by workloads like tight deadlines and pressure to meet great responsibilities at work as the primary causes of workplace stress for both men and women. Previous studies have shown that women find the quality of their working environments to be significantly lower than men, though. This should come as no surprise given that women experience not just the same lack of flexibility around working hours, but also increased job insecurity, more difficulties progressing in their careers, and lower pay all the way up the career ladder.
Stress Is Common Among High-Achieving Women
Combine a heavy workload with stress caused by managing family life, fixating on social standards for body image, and fighting discrimination both in the workplace and elsewhere, and it should be clear that women have every reason to be more prone to stress. High-achieving women also tend to be perfectionists who seek others’ approval to validate their senses of self-worth. When they are unable to meet society’s unreasonable standards for working mothers, they criticize themselves and become more likely not just to experience stress but also to become depressed. The result is that the more than 14 million women in the workforce lose millions of workdays a year to mental health conditions, impacting not just their own lives and their companies’ success, but also the broader economy.
The Bottom Line
For working women, social standards surrounding work-life balance and feminine ideals can’t change fast enough. In the meantime, women have to find other ways to unwind so they can continue to balance challenging careers with the responsibilities of family and social lives in ways that most men will never understand. One can only hope that, someday, society will catch up with changing gender roles at home and in the workplace and they will no longer have to.
Leave a Reply