Problematizing gender, work and health: the relationship between gender, occupational grade, working conditions and minor morbidity in full-time bankemployees

It is commonly asserted that while women have longer life expectancy than m en, they have higher rates of morbidity, particularly for minor and psychol ogical conditions. However, most research on gender and health has taken on ly limited account of the gendered distribution of social roles. Here we in vestigate gender differences in morbidity whilst controlling, as far as pos sible, for one major role, namely participation in paid employment. There i s substantial segregation of the labour market by gender; men and women typ ically work different hours in different occupations which involve varying conditions and differing rewards and costs. Here, we examine men and women working full-time for the same employer. This paper reports on a postal sur vey of employees (1112 men and 1064 women) of a large British bank. It addr esses three main questions: do gender differences in minor morbidity remain if we compare men and women who are employed in similar circumstances (sam e industry and employer)? What is the relative importance of gender, grade of employment within the organisation, perceived working conditions and ori entation to gender roles for minor morbidity? Finally, are these factors re lated to health differentially for men and women? There were statistically significant gender differences amongst these full-time employees in recent experience of malaise symptoms, but not in physical symptoms or GHQ scores. Controlling for other factors did not reduce the gender differences in mal aise scores and produced a weak, but significant, gender difference in GHQ scores. However, gender explained only a small proportion of variance, part icularly in comparison with working conditions. Generally similar relations hips between experience of work and occupational grade and morbidity were o bserved for men and women. Throughout the paper, we attempt to problematize gender, recognising that there are similarities between women and men and diversity amongst women and amongst men. However, we conclude that the gend ered nature of much of adult life, including paid work, continues to shape the experiences and health of men and women at the end of the twentieth cen tury. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.