Women, Work, and Coping: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Workplace Stress

Shelley Butler is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at York University.

This collection of essays examines North American women’s experiences
of paid work, and their strategies for coping with workplace stress.
This focus departs from past research on work and stress, which has been
based largely on men’s experiences and has presumed that work and
family are separate domains. Editors Bonita Long and Sharon Kahn define
their work as both feminist and multidisciplinary, revealing a practical
concern with the well-being of women as well as theoretical concerns
regarding the construction of knowledge.

The collection’s strength is its convincing de-mystification of the
assumption that women who combine paid work with domestic work are
courting conflict. In refuting this demeaning image of women, the essays
in this volume emphasize women’s agency and their ability to cope (and
thrive) despite multiple sources of stress. Gender-specific sources of
stress that are addressed include economic discrimination, the effects
of gender stereotypes, the gendered division of household labor, sexual
harassment, and lack of control over working conditions.

The collection is marked by methodological and theoretical tensions,
such as debates about the relative merits of qualitative and
quantitative research. Some readers will be drawn to particular sections
of the book, since Parts 1 and 2 present women’s work in a larger
social and political context, while the remainder of the book draws
heavily on research by psychologists who use quantitative models to
classify individual solutions to stress.

To its credit, the collection does not attempt to smooth out its own
contradictions. There are, for example, strong critiques of the
individualist approach to studying women’s work and stress. Judi
Marshall considers the political implications of the terms “coping,”
noting that women’s ability to cope with various work conditions may
be ultimately constraining and not challenge the status quo. Similarly,
Diana Mawson reflects on the conservative policy implications that
derive from individualist accounts of stress and coping.

The intersection of class and gender is briefly touched on by Allison
Tom and Catherine Heaney, both of whom examine the assumption that
gender-specific styles of coping exist. Significantly, the volume’s
editors call for future research on women’s work and coping to address
women’s heterogeneity.