Working women sleep less than men: Study
Reported August 11, 2009
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.