The Combined Impact of Workplace and Occupational Gender Composition on Workers’ Mental Health and Employment Consequences

ABSTRACT

We examine whether the gender composition of one’s workplace influences mental health and employment consequences and whether these associations vary for men and women. We test the impact of perceived gender dissimilarity and the aggregate averaged gender composition of the respondent’s occupation. Our study is situated in the mid 2000’s, when women’s labor market participation was comparable to men’s. We use nationally-representative individual-level data from the American Work Stress and Health Survey matched to occupation-level data. We find perceived gender-dissimilarity is associated with worse mental health and employment consequences in feminized occupations. Respondents’ gender partially impacts these associations.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender composition
• mental health
• job satisfaction
• devaluation
• occupation

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We tested our measure of “percent women” using categories (i.e., quartiles of percent women) in each of the regression models to see if this approach better captured the conditional impact of this variable. Results were consistent with those reported using the continuous measure. We retain models using the latter for presentation purposes.

2. For a breakdown of occupations from the WSH, see Appendix B. We observe that women in male-dominated occupations hold some professional or skilled trade positions while men in female-dominated occupations hold positions that may be devalued. For example, positions held by women in occupations that are less than 10% women include Industry Relations Specialist and Forklift Driver while positions held by men in occupations that are more than 90% women include Housekeeper and Receptionist.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Ruth Repchuck

Ruth Repchuck is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at McMaster University and a researcher at the Offord Centre for Child Studies at McMaster University. Her research interests include conditions of work and occupations and their impacts on mental health and well-being, including the intersections of work and gender, class, and family context.

Marisa Young

Marisa Young is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at McMaster University, an Early Career Fellow at the Work-Family Research Network, and a Canadian Research Chair in Mental Health and Work-Life Transitions. Her research investigates the intersection between work, family, and residential contexts to bring a greater understanding to social inequalities in mental health for parents and children.