Employees work at a factory run by PIKO, a model railway manufacturer, in the eastern German town of Sonneberg, October 9, 2014. The small town fell into crisis when East and West Germany reunified but an influx of new firms has helped its economy grow mo
Employees work at a factory run by PIKO, a model railway manufacturer, in the eastern German town of Sonneberg, October 9, 2014. The small town fell into crisis when East and West Germany reunified but an influx of new firms has helped its economy grow more than fourfold since then and it now has the lowest unemployment rate in eastern Germany. Picture taken October 9. Reuters

Women working at highly male-dominated occupations could more likely experience late negative health outcomes, a new study suggests. The male-dominated workplaces could give women high levels of interpersonal, workplace stress that can potentially damage their long-term health.

The researchers from the Indiana University Bloomington examined how stress from particular challenges affects women working in highly male-dominated occupations. Women may encounter social isolation, moments of high visibility and invisibility, performance pressures and obstacles to mobility at the particular workplaces.

Researchers Bianca Manago, a doctoral student in sociology, and Dr Cate Taylor, an assistant professor of sociology and gender studies, added the usual sex-segregation may also serve as social stressors to women, such as sexual harassment, co-workers’ doubts about their competence and low levels of workplace social support.

Prolonged exposure to these social stressors may make women vulnerable to disease and mortality through dysregulation of their body’s stress response. The researchers measured the daily cortisol patterns in women in occupations that were made up of 85 percent or more men to see if they would experience such dysregulation.

Cortisol is described as a stress hormone that naturally changes through the day. People with high levels of interpersonal stress exposure have different patterns of fluctuation compared to people exposed to more average levels of stress, researchers said.

The result, from the data of women’s cortisol profiles in workers across the United States, shows that those women in male-dominated occupations have less healthy, or dysregulated patterns of cortisol throughout the day. Manago said that the cortisol patterns of those women were dysregulated due to their negative working conditions in their workplaces.

“We also use statistical techniques to account for individuals’ occupational and individual-level characteristics, allowing us to be more confident that the dysregulation of cortisol profiles we observe is due to the negative working conditions of token women, and not their own personal characteristics nor the characteristics of their occupations,” she stated.

The researchers also highlighted that exposure to such difficult and negative workplace climates can expose women to chronic stress for years. Manago and Taylor said their study is the first to demonstrate that the negative workplace climates could dysregulate the stress response of women, potentially for years after they are exposed to the stressful workplace climate.

“Our findings are especially important because dysregulated cortisol profiles are associated with negative health outcomes… and provides evidence that the negative workplace social climates encountered by women in male-dominated occupations may be linked to later negative health outcomes for these women,” Taylor said.

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