Are male-dominated workplaces bad for women’s health?

An academic study has found that being a ‘token woman’ in a workplace increases anxiety and can lead to longer term poor health.

BY Steve Randall 02 Sep 2015

Women working in male-dominated workplaces are prone to anxiety which could stay with them for years after they leave that environment.

This is one of the findings of a study by academics at the University of Indiana which looked at industries where women are often a very small number of the total workforce such as construction.

Focusing on workplaces where men make up 85 per cent or more of the workforce, the researchers considered the level of the hormone cortisol in female co-workers.

These levels naturally fluctuate during the day but in stressful situations those changes become dysregulated.

Cortisol helps regulate a range of functions throughout the body including blood pressure and immune system responses and high levels over a prolonged period can be extremely harmful to health.

Bianca Manago, one of the academics involved in the study, said that the team found that women in male-dominated workplaces displayed far more incidents of dysregulated cortisol levels than average. The results factored-out personality traits.

The findings are important for employers, especially in industries which are generally considered more male. That’s because the culture in those sectors may also be male-skewed, which reinforces that in an individual workplace.

Women joining a male-dominated workplace may say that they can ‘give as good as they get’ and join in with the ‘banter’ but if the business’ culture is at odds with what they are truly comfortable with then there could be problems.

In organizations which are addressing diversity it would appear from this study that simply hiring more women may not address this underlying issue. For a workforce that is both diverse and healthy, the business’ culture needs to be balanced.