Work and Menstrual Problems
Women's menstrual problems have a significant impact on their daily lives and work, but due to a declining population, the Japanese government is encouraging more women to join the workforce. However, this goal is only an effort, and in reality, it is riddled with problems and the success of women's participation is limited.
Specifically, women's participation in the workforce affects not only their working conditions, but also their health, including their traditional family situations, and it is considered important to further assess and collect more information on the health status of women who work while raising children. As one indicator, it is believed that menstrual status can be used to describe a woman's health.
Participants were asked to
recruited from graduates of universities offering a uniform level of education, 505 were recruited as the final sample, aged 23-43, in the same job for at least one year, not shift workers, with no maternal status or relevant information.
Participants were divided into two groups according to interval time, with 11 hours between the end of work and the resumption of daily work as a benchmark.
Health outcomes included menstrual cycle, symptoms of dysmenorrhea, health concerns, and health satisfaction. Multiple logistic regression analyses were conducted to estimate and conclude odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for health indicators related to interval time by adjusting for confounding variables including both psychosocial and biological factors.
Results.
We compared the health status of women with and without sufficient interval time of 11 hours/day. Workers with shorter interval hours had a significantly higher prevalence of health concerns and health complaints, and in terms of menstrual status, only abnormal menstrual cycles were found in the short interval group than in the long interval group.
However, this association disappears when biological confounders are adjusted for in a multivariable regression model, and dysmenorrhea symptoms do not show a statistically significant association with short interval time.
In conclusion, we found that women's health may be harmed in the future by long working hours and engaging in an environment where the time between the end of one workday and the start of the next is short, or where the balance between day and night shifts is easily disrupted, which may increase dissatisfaction and anxiety about work.
It is suggested that these effects are more likely to be influenced by biological factors than social factors.
Nishikitani, M., Nakao, M., Tsurugano, S. et al. Relationship between menstruation status and work conditions in Japan. BioPsychoSocial Med 11, 26 ( 2017). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13030-017-0112-x
Summary
This study suggests that disrupting biological rhythms in the work environment can be detrimental to women's health and increase the psychological anxiety and dissatisfaction caused by such an environment.
As mentioned in the paper, it is questionable whether the women in the sample are representative of Japanese work styles. As mentioned in the paper, it is questionable whether the women in the sample are representative of the Japanese workforce. The sample consisted of university students with an average level of academic ability, which means that their incomes are generally high and their working conditions are good. Therefore, it is possible that other conditions must be taken into account in order to generalize this result.
Depending on the occupation, how many workplaces start at 9:00 a.m. and end at 6:00 p.m.? If you are working in the service industry, you may need to consider other conditions. Especially if you work in the service industry, you may find yourself working from 10:00 to 20:00, and even if you take commuting time into consideration, there are few environments with an interval of more than 11 hours. I think so.
This is a problem that is unlikely to disappear as long as time is tied to salary, so perhaps more and more people will aim to work the way they want to.
