Women plagued by ‘double-shift’ stress - at home and work

LONDON - Women constantly juggle two roles, both important - that of a homemaker and a professional, and therefore suffer the double-shift stress syndrome.

Double the stress means more symptoms of stress - back and neck pain - far more than men, even when physical causes are removed, research has revealed.

University of Gothenburg experts in Sweden found that in the student group, women students showed more neck pain, and amongst the workforce, whose jobs mostly involved work on computers.

In both the computer users and the students, neck pain was affected by psychosocial factors.

“In nearly every developed country women perform what we call the double-shift. They go to work like a man but then also come home and perform the primary role at home, so face double pressure from those two roles,” the Daily Mail quoted Professor Cary Cooper, organisational psychologist at Lancaster University, as saying.

“For female students there is the added pressure of having to compete in a man’s world and be better than men to land top positions in their fields,” he added. (ANI)