WASHINGTON: Women working full-time sleep less than men as they shoulder
dual responsibility of office and home, a study
said.
The study conducted by Professor David Maume of the University of Cincinnati
(U-C), graduate student Rachel A. Sebastian and Miami University (Ohio) graduate
student Anthony R. Bardo shows that load of work and family turns off the good
night sleep of women.
The study authors conducted a phone survey of 583 union workers represented by a
Midwestern chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). It took
place between January and April of 2007. About 62 percent of the respondents
were women.
The authors also found that women were more likely to report sleep disruption
than their male counterparts. Concerns of marriage, work schedules, demanding
jobs affect their sleep, the authors added in a U-C release.
They said men whose wives worked full-time also reported sleep disruption when
jobs and family lives spill into each other, but significantly less than women.
"Overall, the results show that gendered reactions to work-family situations
accounted for more than half of the gender gap in sleep disruption," the authors
said.
"Drawing on scholarship on gender inequality on time use, we contend that sleep
is an activity that is affected by gender inequality in waking role
obligations," they added.
Participants were asked about the number of hours they slept, as well as about
sleep-related questions that health care workers would review in examining the
health effects of sleep loss, such as, "In the past three months, did you never,
rarely, sometimes or often..."
Researchers found that gender differences in health status accounted for a
substantial portion (27 percent) of the gender gap in sleep disruption, with
women more likely to report health effects on sleep disruption.
Source : 104th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA)
in San Francisco.
