Although males, between the ages of 20 to 30, with five or more years of work experience in presupervisory or premanagerial jobs, make up the group comprising the largest numbers affected by occupational stress due to their majority position in the overall work force, another group that is disproportionately and more adversely affected is women. Occupational stressors are also compounded when the women are members of an ethnic or racial minority (Pelletier 47).
In 1992, the Northwestern National Life Insurance Company in Minneapolis polled 1,299 full-time employees at a random sample of U.S. companies and found women experienced much more job stress than men. Women were more likely than men to suffer from a serious stress-related illness (41 percent versus 26 percent). Job burnout was reported by 36 percent of the women, compared with 28 percent of the men. Single mothers were among the most stressed members of the work force. The three top sources of job stress, according to another survey of working women, were: a major job change in the past year (this includes a new job, new location, new tasks, or a new boss); work overload (such as more than can possibly be finished in an ordinary day); pay inequality (Wein 121).
The same survey found that the balance between work and family life was a source of dissatisfaction for 25 percent of women in the high-stress group, a complaint made by only four percent of the less-stressed workers. Additionally, among the high-stressed women, 18 percent said they had experienced sexual advances from men at work in the past year. Only four percent of the rarely stressed women reported the same problem (Wein 121).
Beginning with the popular and accurate saying that "every mother is a working mother," and judging by the recently emerging studies of women executives, it is evident that women executives are under equal if not greater occupational stress than their male counterparts...