Women Feel Guilty and Distressed When Contacted Outside Workplace

As compared to men, women are more likely to have feelings of guilt and distress if they are frequently contacted by colleagues, supervisors or clients outside their workplace. The study was conducted by the University of Toronto. Due to advances in technology like emails, blackberry’s, iphones in recent years, scientists wanted to study the effects of work-related contact. For this purpose they analyzed data from Work, Stress and Health Survey. They conducted interviews with 1,800 American adults in 2005 and followed by another interview in 2007. Researchers found that there was an association between receiving ‘work-related contact’ and ‘guilt and distress’ for women, while they did not find such association among men. Though women were able to juggle the load as well as men they felt more guilty as a result of being contacted. Women reported that they felt guilty even though it did not affect their family life. This was the case even for women who were single and did not have children. Scientists could not ascertain the reason as to why men did not feel guilty or distressed due to work-related communications at home. However they said, "Part of what we speculate on in the study is that it may be something to do with cultural norms around work and non-work life."

This study was published in the March issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.




Source-Medindia