Women who face heavy psychological pressures at work are more likely to gain weight, a study claims. The study, published in the journal International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, included data from over 3,872 participants in Sweden.
“We were able to see that high job demands played a part in women’s weight gain, while for men there was no association between high demands and weight gain,” said Sofia Klingberg, a researcher at University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
The participants in the study were investigated on three occasions over a 20-year period with respect to such variables as body weight and demands and control at work. They were followed either from age 30 to 50 or from 40 to 60.
To estimate the level of job demands, the respondents were asked about their work pace, psychological pressures, whether there was enough time for their duties and how often the demands made were contradictory.
The questions about control at work covered such matters as how often they learned something new; whether the job called for imagination or advanced skills; and whether the respondent was personally able to choose what to do and how to do it.
The results show that the respondents with a low degree of control in their work more frequently gained considerable weight, defined as a weight gain of 10 percent or more, in the course of the study. This applied to women and men alike.