Orange County, CA - March 1st, 2019 - UK researchers have found that women working long hours is linked to depression, but is not the same for men.
The study found that women who work more than fifty-five hours per week were more susceptible to suffer depression than the woman who works the typical forty-hour week. Men who worked long hours overall did not have an increased risk of depression. However, they were more likely to have problems if they worked weekends.
The study used information from over 23,000 British adults, that was tracked since 2009. Men, in comparison to women, were also at a higher risk of suffering low moods associated with working on the weekend at 4.6 percent opposed to 3.4 percent. Roughly half of the women worked part-time, compared to just one in seven men.
“Although we cannot establish the exact causes, we do know many women face the additional burden of doing a larger share of domestic labor than men, leading to extensive total work hours, added time pressures and overwhelming responsibilities. We hope our findings will encourage employers and policy-makers to think about how to reduce the burdens and increase support for women who work long or irregular hours – without restricting their ability to work when they wish to. More sympathetic working practices could bring benefits both for workers and for employers – of both sexes,” said lead author Gill Weston, of University College London.
The study appears in the BMJ Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
