(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON, DC, November 17, 2014 -- A new study finds that having job authority increases symptoms of depression among women, but decreases them among men.
"Women with job authority -- the ability to hire, fire, and influence pay -- have significantly more symptoms of depression than women without this power," said Tetyana Pudrovska, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and the lead author of the study. "In contrast, men with job authority have fewer symptoms of depression than men without such power."
Titled, "Gender, Job Authority, and Depression," the study, which appears in the December issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, considers more than 1,300 middle-aged men and 1,500 middle-aged women, who graduated from high schools in Wisconsin.
According to Pudrovska, who co-authored the study with Amelia Karraker, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Iowa State University, women without job authority exhibit slightly more symptoms of depression on average than men without job authority. But among people with the ability to hire, fire, and influence pay, women typically exhibit many more symptoms of depression than men.
"What's striking is that women with job authority in our study are advantaged in terms of most characteristics that are strong predictors of positive mental health," said Pudrovska. "These women have more education, higher incomes, more prestigious occupations, and higher levels of job satisfaction and autonomy than women without job authority. Yet, they have worse mental health than lower-status women."
So why does having job authority increase symptoms of depression in women, but decrease them in men?
"Years of social science research suggests that women in authority positions deal with interpersonal tension, negative social interactions, negative stereotypes, prejudice, social isolation, as well as resistance from subordinates, colleagues, and superiors," Pudrovska said. "Women in authority positions are viewed as lacking the assertiveness and confidence of strong leaders. But when these women display such characteristics, they are judged negatively for being unfeminine. This contributes to chronic stress."
On the other hand, Pudrovska said men in authority positions generally deal with fewer stressors because they do not have to overcome the resistance and negative stereotypes that women often face. "Men in positions of authority are consistent with the expected status beliefs, and male leadership is accepted as normative and legitimate," she said. "This increases men's power and effectiveness as leaders and diminishes interpersonal conflict."
In terms of the study's policy implications, Pudrovska said the findings indicate that "we need to address gender discrimination, hostility, and prejudice against women leaders to reduce the psychological costs and increase the psychological rewards of higher-status jobs for women."
INFORMATION:
The study was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Aging.
About the American Sociological Association and the Journal of Health and Social Behavior
The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society. The Journal of Health and Social Behavior is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal of the ASA.
The research article described above is available by request for members of the media. For a copy of the full study, contact Daniel Fowler, ASA Media Relations Manager.
WASHINGTON, DC, November 18, 2014 -- A new study indicates that heterosexuals have predominately egalitarian views on legal benefits for -- but not public displays of affection (PDA) by -- same-sex couples.
"We found that, for the most part, heterosexuals are equally as supportive of legal benefits for same-sex couples as they are for heterosexual couples, but are much less supportive of public displays of affection for same-sex couples than they are for heterosexuals," said Long Doan, a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University and the lead author ...
The cost of patients not taking their medications as prescribed can be substantial in terms of their health. Although a large amount of research evidence has tried to address this problem, there are no well-established approaches to help them, according to a new systematic review published in the Cochrane Library. The authors of the review examined data from 182 trials testing different approaches to increasing medication adherence and patient health. Even though the review included a significant number of the best studies to date, in most cases, trials had important problems ...
AUSTIN, Texas -- Job authority increases symptoms of depression among women, but decreases them among men, according to a new study from University of Texas at Austin sociologist Tetyana Pudrovska.
"Women with job authority -- the ability to hire, fire, and influence pay -- have significantly more symptoms of depression than women without this power," said Pudrovska, the lead author of the study. "In contrast, men with job authority have fewer symptoms of depression than men without such power."
The study, "Gender, Job Authority, and Depression," published in the December ...
Pioneering use of whole genome sequencing in real time to help control a hospital outbreak is reported in an article published in the open access journal Genome Medicine. The research corroborates the use of the technique as a rapid and cost-effective way of tracking and controlling the spread of drug-resistant hospital pathogens.
Acinetobacter baumannii is a multi-drug resistant pathogen found in hospitals across the globe and emerged as a significant threat to casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It affects severely ill patients, particularly trauma and burns ...
The Sun may be playing a part in the generation of lightning strikes on Earth by temporarily 'bending' the Earth's magnetic field and allowing a shower of energetic particles to enter the upper atmosphere.
This is according to researchers at the University of Reading who have found that over a five year period the UK experienced around 50% more lightning strikes when the Earth's magnetic field was skewed by the Sun's own magnetic field.
The Earth's magnetic field usually functions as an in-built force-field to shield against a bombardment of particles from space, known ...
A new study published online today in the journal Oxford Economic Papers has found that, on average, terrorist attacks decrease fertility, reducing both the expected number of children a woman has over her lifetime and the number of live births occurring during each year.
In recent years, terrorism has grown as a significant factor affecting our lives in unforeseen ways. Much has been written regarding the causes of terrorism, yet the ramifications of prolonged exposure to terrorism are still to be thoroughly studied. This new study, carried out by Dr. Claude Berrebi ...
Scientists at Queen's University Belfast have led the discovery of a volcanic ash cloud that travelled from Alaska to Northern Ireland and beyond - overturning previously held assumptions about how far ash deposits can drift, with major implications for the airline industry.
The discovery, which was made in partnership with an international team of academics and has been published in the journal Geology, is the first evidence that ash clouds can travel across the Atlantic Ocean, confirming Queen's as a global leader in research. This particular ash, found in sites across ...
Barcelona, Spain: Researchers have found a way of identifying which ovarian cancer patients are likely to respond well to a new anti-cancer drug called rucaparib.
Results of clinical trials have shown that women with tumours that are sensitive to platinum-based chemotherapy and who carry inherited mutations in the BRCA1/2 genes respond well to rucaparib. But in new findings presented today (Thursday) at the 26th EORTC-NCI-AACR [1] Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Barcelona, Spain, researchers say that they have identified a biological indicator ...
Barcelona, Spain: A drug that is already well established as a treatment for infection of the retina in people with AIDS has been shown, for the first time, to sensitise cervical cancer to chemotherapy and radiotherapy without an increase in toxic side-effects.
Cidofovir is an anti-viral drug that is effective against several viruses, including the human papilloma virus (HPV), which is implicated in the onset of cervical cancer. It targets the cancer-causing proteins (oncoproteins) produced by HPV. These oncoproteins interfere with the action of other proteins that control ...
Barcelona, Spain: Patients with B-cell Non-Hodgkin lymphomas and advanced solid tumours have responded to a new drug that is being tested for the first time in humans in a phase I clinical trial.
Preliminary results from the trial will be presented today (Thursday) at the 26th EORTC-NCI-AACR [1] Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Barcelona, Spain. They show responses in four lymphoma patients who have failed numerous previous treatments and also in one patient with a cancer for which there is no approved medical treatment at all - a malignant rhabdoid ...
