Even though we already know that women on average live longer than men and are also more open-minded towards issues such as prevention and health promotion, with this article we focus on a specific group of women: working women!
Today we celebrate International Women’s Day and it is an opportunity to focus attention on issues that affect working women in order to initiate change in this area. The goal is to draw attention to the health and well-being of women in the workforce while raising awareness about the importance of advocating for equality and justice.
Working women often face challenges such as the double burden of work and family responsibilities, unequal pay, and discrimination in the workplace. All of these circumstances can have serious consequences for women’s physical and mental health and performance. Evidence of this can be found in various studies on the subject: Alqahtani’s (2020) findings, for example, show that women tend to face more role conflict than men. A meta-analysis by Allen et al. (2014) adds that women who achieve a good work-life balance have higher levels of psychological well-being. That working conditions such as high workloads, lack of resources, or inadequate workplace support can negatively impact psychological well-being is well known (e.g., Kutty, 2019).
But what can companies do to help working women stay physically and mentally healthy?
Employers can make use of a mass of measures to promote the mental well-being of working women. These measures include, for example, flexible working hours, fair pay, family care support services, or targeted stress prevention measures. The message this paper aims to convey is that equal and health-oriented working conditions must and can be created to give working women the chance to be successful and healthy in every way.
Sources:
Allen, T. D., Golden, T. D., & Shockley, K. M. (2015). How effective is telecommuting? Assessing the status of our scientific findings. Psychological science in the public interest, 16(2), 40-68.
Alqahtani, T. H. (2020). Work-life balance of women employees. Granite Journal, 4(1), 37-42.
Kutty, Sneha Racheal Samuel. “A study on “Effect of work load on health of women Employees working in IT/BPO sector”.” IJAR 5.11 (2019): 68-75.