© AlamyA double whammy of pressure means women show the classic symptoms of stress, back and neck pain, far more than men
Women are locked into a 'double-shift' of home and work - both roles leaving them suffering with more symptoms of stress than men.
The double whammy of pressure means that women show the classic symptoms of stress - back and neck pain - far more than men, even when physical causes are removed, research has revealed.
The four-year study focused on two groups of men and women - one students, the other workers - in an effort to isolate possible causes of stress.
In both groups, women showed the symptoms of stress more than men.
In the student group, women students showed more neck pain, and amongst the workforce, whose jobs mostly involved work on computers, women showed more of both back and neck pain, experts at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden found.
In both the computer users and the students, neck pain was affected by psychosocial factors, the experts said. Commenting on the findings, Professor Cary Cooper, organisational psychologist at Lancaster University, said: 'In nearly every developed country women perform what we call the double-shift.
'They go to work like a man but then also come home and perform the primary role at home, so face double pressure from those two roles.'
One of the academics, Anna Grimby-Ekman, said: 'The results [in the student group] were a surprise as we had expected roughly the same number of women as men would develop neck pain in a young group like this, where the majority had yet to start a family.'
Professor Cooper said: 'For female students there is the added pressure of having to compete in a man's world and be better than men to land top positions in their fields.'
Peer pressure and cultural conformity persists until one chooses not to participate by taking that lock off and setting oneself free. In other words, beware who you hang/mate with. No wonder the allure of the early years fades so fast, especially when lovers move in together. That is a sure way to end the romance and begin the double duty of cultural conformity. Then this leads to marriage, children and all the rest like religion, schools, govt... once you start, you cannot stop because now you have seen the light of change.
Unless suicide is the preferred remedy for this stress and not actually eliminating it like ones' body waste. Isn't it just a different type of waste that needs regular disposal? Isn't this stress of sign of that symptom?