Women Work And Coping

Until recently, theories and research about job stress and ways of coping have been based primarily on men's experience. Women's experience of stress and coping has remained unexplored, despite studies which show that women are confronted with more and different work-related stressors than men.

Written by feminists and other researchers from the disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and management science, the fourteen essays in this collection are about women's experience of paid work and women's ways of coping with employment stress. The opening essays highlight the tremendous social and cultural changes that have compelled women to develop new coping strategies. Several contributing authors examine specific workplace structures and describe women's experiences in different occupational contexts whether hostile or hospitable. Shifting from a structural to an individual perspective, other contributors deal with psychosocial factors, such as gender differences, that have been found to moderate stress and enhance the coping process. They analyse individual experiences with work-related stressors, focusing on the mediating effects of cognitive appraisals. The concluding chapters provide a critique of research methods commonly used to study work-related stress and coping and a review by the editors of the many factors and relationships which influence women's ways of coping with employment stress. Women, Work, and Coping contains contributions by Nina Colwill, Bruce E. Compas, Esther R. Greenglass, Barbara Gutek, Catherine A. Heaney, Sharon E. Kahn, Ronald C. Kessler, Karen Korabik, Bonita C. Long, Judi Marshall, Diana L. Mawson, Lisa M. McDonald, Pamela G. Orosan, Hazel M. Rosin, Craig A. Smith, Anne Statham, Allison Tom, Elaine Wethington, and Lois M. Verbrugge.

One of the New York Post's Top 10 Career Books of 2012 and a Booklist Top 10 Business Book DO YOU WORK WITH A MEAN GIRL? A woman’s field guide to the new frontier of professional development—working with other women Women-to-women relationships in the workplace are . . . complicated. When they’re good, they’re great. But when they’re bad, they can ruin your day, your week—even your year. Packed with proven advice from two of today’s leading experts in workplace relationships, this one-of-a-kind guide gives women the tools they need to navigate difficult situations unique to women-to-women relationships—whether with a boss, a colleague, a client, or an employee. Have you dealt with a woman in the workplace who: “Accidentally” excludes you from important meetings? Seems intent on taking you down professionally? Gossips about you with other coworkers? Makes you look bad by missing deadlines? Forms a “pack” of mean girls to make your life miserable? Mean Girls at Work isn’t just about surviving difficult situations. It’s about transforming a toxic relationship into one that benefits and supports both of you. This book is also for women who engage in mean behavior . . . but don’t know it. After all, who hasn’t gossiped about a female coworker? Who hasn’t rolled her eyes in the presence of a woman she doesn’t like? Who hasn’t scanned another woman head to toe—which is just a nonverbal way of saying, “You’ve just been judged”? The authors provide invaluable advice to the more subtle ways of being mean—even if they’re not intended. With a workforce composed of a higher percentage of women than ever, workplace dynamics have changed. Crowley and Elster cover every conceivable scenario, providing critical advice on how to rise above the fray and move forward professionally. Mean Girls at Work is your map to dodging the mines and moving forward in today’s transformed workplace. Praise for Mean Girls at Work “An invaluable suit of armor for surviving nine to five!” —Leil Lowndes, bestselling author of How to Talk to Anyone “If you think the emotional cruelty of comedies like Mean Girls and Heathers doesn’t exist in the real world workplace, think again. In Mean Girls at Work, Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster valuably chronicle female vs. female predators and offer solid defensive strategies.” —Ann Kreamer, author of It’s Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the New Workplace “Whether you are in your twenties and just starting your professional career, your midcareer forties, when you are supposed to have figured it out already, or a woman in her fifties or sixties who’s seen it all—this book is a must-read. . . . The authors have finally given women the tools and the sound advice necessary to deal with . . . conflicts that keep us all from succeeding. . . . Carry this book with you to work every day!” —Carolyn Cassin, President, Michigan Women’s Foundation “A must-read for women of all ages in today’s workforce. This book offers what we all need to develop the capacities to endure this ever-changing workplace. We know it is all about relationships and you need the skills outlined in this book to survive and thrive when the Mean Girls attack.” —Kim Harrington, Coordinator, Professional Development and Training, Office of Human Resources, California State University, Sacramento

Until recently, studies of women's health received scant research attention in the context of the overall magnitude of research conducted on health. Even for health issues that affect both men and women, most research has been limited to male subjects, leaving a large gap in our knowledge base concerning women's health. Finally, the decade of the 1990s is ushering in a shift in this inequity. In 1990 the U.S. National Institutes of Health issued a compelling report citing the lack of sufficient research on women's health as a major gap in our knowledge, and a mandate has been issued to add women as study subjects in research or to document why they have not been included. Such directives will undoubtedly lead to a much-needed burgeoning of research activities in the area of women's health as we approach the twenty-first century. Despite limited research resources, however, there have been steady, scientifically rigorous voices in the wilderness for the last several years, and many of the best investigators are represented in this volume. These workers have led the vanguard in exploring psychosocial factors that are likely to differentially affect women's and men's health. For example, women and men engage in social roles that often differ, if not in quantity, then certainly in quality. Sex differences in role expectations, environmen tal qualities, role burdens related to the domains of work and family, and abilities to adapt to and cope with stressful situations may have a distinctive impact on health.

In Gender, Work Stress, and Health, editors Debra L. Nelson and Ronald J. Burke explore how socially defined gender roles affect individuals' experience of stress and health at work. Working with a group of interdisciplinary contributors, they examine the interplay of gender, individual differences, social support, coping skills, family dynamics, and aspects of the work environment and ask how these affect health. This collection draws from the emerging knowledge in the fields of management, psychology, sociology, and epidemiology. Among the questions examined are whether men and women experience different sources of stress at work, whether they experience different symptoms of distress, whether they benefit equally from social support, how they cope, and what organizations are doing to help. Professionals in human resources management, consulting, training and development, and occupational health will be particularly interested in the effectiveness of prevention and intervention efforts related to corporate culture and flexible workload arrangements and whether family-friendly policies are fulfilling their promise of helping to balance work and family demands. Researchers in management, business, occupational psychology, sociology, and gender studies will find fertile areas for continued exploration within this field.

The consequences of ineffective coping are evident in the health of individuals and organisations. This book brings together a wealth of research and thinking about coping in occupational settings. Coping, Health and Organizations begins by looking at measurement of coping with stress. The theoretical and psychometric considerations discussed in the opening section of the book explore the principles for successful evaluation of coping, and the effectiveness of organizational support. The book continues, going through various problems in work including acute disasters, coping with subjective health problems, and then goes on to look at what companies can do to reduce factors that result in stress. The book concludes by looking at the debates of the past and present and discusses the future of coping at work. Key Features: * Stress at work and its affect on both the individual and the company is becoming an increasingly important factor in business today * Brings together a wealth of research and thinking about stress in occupational settings * A very forward thinking book

In the past, social scientists have relied predominantly on traditional models of work to understand women's experiences. These models, however, have been based on men's occupational experiences, which have been assumed to be the same for women. More recently, researchers and theorists from a variety of disciplines have begun to challenge earlier assumptions as inaccurate reflections of the realities for female workers. Newer studies have concentrated on the historical and social reasons for women's employment and career choices, including changes in economy, family, and social conditions. To provide a deeper understanding of women worker's realities by including the meaning they make of their work experiences, the editors have assembled the research of social scientists from various disciplines whose investigations focused exclusively on this subject. Their qualitative methodology provides a forum for women to voice issues, raise questions, and share self-reflections about their work experiences and the meaning they make of their work in the context of the rest of their lives. The common themes that are interwoven within the fabric of women's work experience are: the need to expand traditional definitions of what constitutes "work;" the fluid nature of boundaries between personal life and work life; the importance of the relational aspects of their work; the issues related to the uses of power at work; the role of work in the development of women's sense of self and personal identity; and the degree to which women's work experience is colored by discrimination and sexism.