Gender-Specific Aspects of Teachers Regarding Working Behavior and Early Retirement

Abstract

Worldwide, a significant proportion of teachers retires prematurely for health reasons or at their own request. The study examines whether male and female teachers differ in terms of working conditions and coping with high work demands as well as individual factors that promote early retirement. A cross-sectional study was conducted to collect data from 6,109 full-time teachers in high schools (56% women). Weekly working hours from a four-week working time record and psychosocial work stress (effort-reward model, ER ratio) were used as workloads. In addition, emotional exhaustion (Maslach Burnout Inventory) and coping strategies that endangered health were recorded in the form of overcommitment and inability to recover. Also, the teachers gave a prediction and reasons for early retirement and made their own suggestions on how to prevent this. The results show that both workloads and emotional exhaustion are comparable between the genders, but women have a greater tendency than men to overcommit and be unable to recover. As ER ratio and emotional exhaustion increase, the chances for both genders to reach the regular retirement age decrease significantly; for health-endangering coping strategies, the relationship is somewhat weaker. The majority of male and female teachers (79%) indicates excessive workloads as the main reason for leaving the profession early. In order to protect teachers from high workloads, measures at the organizational, social, and individual level are necessary. Proposals for schools and policy makers are critically discussed on the basis of teacher recommendations.

Teachers’ Well-Being and Associated Factors during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study in Hong Kong, China

“…Klassen and Chiu [ 68 ] studied 1,430 in-service teachers in western Canada and revealed that female teachers reported more workload- and classroom-related stress than male teachers. Similarly, other studies have suggested that females perceive slightly higher levels of stress than males in school settings [ 69 , 70 ]. Moreover, at the general population level, females were more often associated with higher stress levels than males during the first period of the COVID-19 pandemic [ 71 ].…”

Too Committed to Switch Off—Capturing and Organizing the Full Range of Work-Related Rumination from Detachment to Overcommitment

“…A recent systematic review found overcommitment linked to impaired self-reported (e.g., fatigue, insomnia) and physiological health outcomes (e.g., blood pressure, atherogenic lipids) [ 26 ]. Moreover, overcommitment is positively linked to indicators of impaired energetic well-being, such as fatigue [ 27 ], burnout [ 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ], emotional exhaustion [ 15 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 ], vital exhaustion [ 43 , 44 ], and need for recovery [ 27 , 45 ]. Other systematic reviews [ 26 , 46 ] found that overcommitment was associated with higher levels of (psycho)somatic complaints, also supported by more recent research [ 47 , 48 , 49 ].…”

“…According to our literature research (see Supplementary Materials ), empirical evidence linking overcommitment to work-related rumination is almost non-existent. Among the studies identified, not all reported correlations between overcommitment and the other facets of work-related rumination were considered [ 31 , 41 , 67 ], leaving us with a very small set of studies.…”

Too Committed to Switch off – Capturing and Organizing the Full Range of Work-Related Rumination from Detachment to Overcommitment

“…A recent systematic review of ERI found that overcommitment is linked to impaired self-reported (e.g., fatigue, insomnia) and physiological health outcomes (e.g., blood pressure, atherogenic lipids) [25]. More specifically, there is empirical evidence that overcommitment is positively linked to indicators of impaired energetic well-being, such as fatigue [26], burnout [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34], emotional exhaustion [15,[35][36][37][38][39][40][41], vital exhaustion (a compound of strain indicators including exhaustion) [42,43], and need for recovery [26,44]. Systematic reviews of ERI [45] and more specifically of overcommitment [25] found that overcommitment is associated with higher levels of (psycho)somatic complaints.…”

“…In other words, empirical evidence linking overcommitment to work-related rumination is almost non-existent. Among the studies identified not all reported correlations between overcommitment and the facets of work-related rumination considered [30,40,65], leaving us with a very small set of studies. Below, we summarize and review the empirical evidence available.…”