Women's household and paid work: The nature and health effects of time investment in work and work stress.

Abstract

Women's work has been largely ignored by social scientists who study the relationship of work to health, particularly in terms of how specific dimensions of work relate to health. Research has tended to focus on whether women are employed or not, without examining actual characteristics of women's paid jobs. Research on the relationship of housework to women's health has been more speculative; housework has usually been assumed to be unhealthy work, but again, specific work characteristics have hardly been examined. Housework is still performed mainly by women, but the effects of its working conditions on women's health are largely unknown. Unlike most previous research, this dissertation examines and compares the nature and health effects of specific characteristics of women's paid work and housework, namely time investment in work, and stress from and enjoyment of work. Empirical support is provided for the expectation that paid work and housework are similar in terms of how these particular characteristics are related to women's physical and mental health. Nationally representative survey data are used. Support is found for the prediction that a curvilinear relationship exists between women's time investment in work and health. Women who spend moderate amounts of time working tend to be in better health than women who spend extremely high or low amounts of time working. This relationship holds for non-employed women's housework and for employed women's paid work. Variations in these relationships by demographic factors are found; family composition factors are particularly important. In terms of the levels of different stressors present in each type of work, housework is not found to be a fundamentally different form of work than paid work. Support is also found for the prediction that paid work and housework stressors have similar effects on women's health. For both types of work, the more demanding and less enjoyed work is, and the less autonomy women have over it, the worse health tends to be. Variations by family composition and paid occupation are found in these relationships. Evidence for role overload is found for employed women who identify strongly with both home and paid job.