Job Stress, Psychosocial Strain, and Physical Health Problems in Women Employed Full-Time Outside the Home and Homemakers

A pair of studies was conducted to investigate for both women employed full-time outside the home and homemakers: (a) relations between job-related stress and various indices of psychosocial strain and reported physical health problems; and (b) social support and number of children in the home in regard to direct relations with indices of psychosocial strain and physical health problems as well as moderating effects on relations between job stress and these indices. Self-report data were collected from 91 women employed outside the home and 95 homemakers. For both groups of women, more quantitative overload was associated with more tension and health problems. Greater quantitative overload was associated with more marital dissatisfaction for homemakers but not for women employed outside the home. Greater underutilization of skills for both groups of women was associated with more self-reported tension and poorer quality of marital relations but was not associated with health problems. Less reported tension was associated with greater overall social support for homemakers and greater social support from supervisors for women employed outside the home. Better quality of marital relationships was associated with greater overall social support for homemakers and greater social support from husbands and relatives/friends for women employed outside the home. For women employed outside the home, social support from supervisors and coworkers were found to moderate some of the relations between job stress and measures of psychosocial strain. Social support for homemakers, however, evidenced no moderating effects for relations involving job stress. Possibly because of low mean number and small variability in number of children in these samples, no direct relations or moderating effects were found for number of children for either group of women.