Health and Work Environment among Female and Male Swedish Elementary School Teachers—A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background and objectives: Changes in teachers' work situation in Sweden since the 1990s may have contributed to an increase in common mental disorders (CMDs) and burnout. However, there is a lack of research in this field. The aim was to describe how Swedish elementary school teachers experience their health, organizational and social work environment, and the psychosocial safety climate at the workplace, and especially differences and similarities between female and male teachers. Materials and methods: Data were collected with the COPSOQ, OLBI, UWES and PSC-12 from 478 elementary teachers, 81.0% of them women, from twenty schools. The response rate was 96.4%. Results: Teachers reported relatively good general health but experienced high stress, high work pace and emotional demands, low influence at work and a poor psychosocial safety climate. These factors were especially prominent among female teachers. Both women and men experienced good development possibilities and high work engagement. Conclusions: The results of this study can help us to develop a more sustainable work environment for female and male teachers. A more sustainable work environment might attract more people to the profession and incentivize existing teachers to remain in the profession.

Factors Associated with Psychological Well-Being and Stress: A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Psychological Well-Being and Gender Differences in a Population of Teachers

“…Despite the suggestions of gender-related individual differences in stress and stress responses (e.g., Boström et al, 2020;Matud et al, 2019), this study shows that the latent correlations among the protective factors and the dimensions of psychological well-being are mostly not affected by by gender. In other words, gender does not play a major role in the variability of the relations among the factors that help in reducing work-related stress.…”

“…From the cross-cultural perspective, the findings of the Australian study by Timms, Graham, and Caltabiano (2006) corroborated with these of Boström et al (2020), that is, their female teacher participants scored higher in stress and burnout measures than their male counterparts. Similar evidence has also been reported regarding the general population in other singlecountry studies (e.g., Matud, 2004) and in cross-country studies (e.g., Miller et al, 2004).…”

“…Admittedly, female teacher participants in various empirical studies are predominantly vulnerable/ more sensitive to stress as compared to their male coworkers. Specifically, the research conducted by Boström et al (2020) drew a sample of Swedish primary school teachers and reached the conclusion that female participants perceived increased levels of job-related stress, higher levels of emotional demands, and unsatisfying psychosocial environment conditions. Further, Matud, López-Curbelo, and Fortes (2019) underscore the fact that the pertinent studies of gender-related individual differences in psychological well-being processes do not concede.…”

Validation of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire Version III and Establishment of Benchmarks for Psychosocial Risk Management in Sweden

“…Studies across different occupations have corroborated the internal consistency reliability and construct validity of the scales [11][12][13][15][16][17][18][19]. The ability to distinguish different groups (organizations with similar missions, work teams or occupational groups) has been demonstrated [20][21][22], as also the relevance of multilevel analyses and for intervention and organizational change studies [23][24][25][26][27][28][29].…”

Work-Family Conflict Impact on Psychological Safety and Psychological Well-Being: A Job Performance Model

“…Up until this point, there has been very little empirical investigation on the relationship between workfamily conflict and work performance. Past research has mostly focused on limiting the effect of work-family conflict on few variables, such as leadership (Major and Cleveland, 2007;Hammer et al, 2009;Major and Morganson, 2011,;Matthews et al, 2013;Hill et al, 2016), organizational support (Keoboualapheth et al, 2017), psychological well-being (e.g., Allen et al, 2000;O'Driscoll et al, 2004;Ibrahim et al, 2009;Karimi et al, 2011;Lee et al, 2013;Matthews et al, 2014), psychological safety (Cullen, 2005;Dollard and Bakker, 2010;Dollard and Karasek, 2010;Hall et al, 2010;Murphy, 2011), and the relation between work-family conflict and work-family relationship with work stress (Kazmi et al, 2017;Lu et al, 2017;Smith et al, 2018), exhaustion (Chen and Huang, 2016), burnout (Montgomery et al, 2003), job control (Proost et al, 2010;Golden et al, 2013), job satisfaction (Aryee et al, 2005;Ford et al, 2007;Kafetsios, 2007) and turnover intention (Lu et al, 2017). Despite research advances, work-family scholars still lack clear understanding of how constructs of the psychological well-being and psychological safety relate to employee's job performance Resolution of workfamily conflict affects employee psychology that translates to positive work behavior.…”