As I was driving home from work one afternoon, I saw an alert on my watch from an article from CNN titled “Hard-working women, go home earlier to avoid this disease”. Immediately I was curious as to what this could be discussing. Especially since I am guilty of staying at work late to finish things up and it doesn’t help that my team at work has gotten smaller while the workload has not.
As I am scrolling through the article I saw the main message was “if women work fewer hours, it’ll lower their risk of diabetes.” Canadian researchers conducted a 12-year study that found that women who worked 45+ hours per week have a 63% greater risk of diabetes compared to those who worked between 35-40 hours. They considered if there were other factors like smoking, working out, or alcohol consumption but that only reduced the impact slightly.
Interestingly enough, men who worked longer hours were not at risk. Throughout the study, it was not clear why there were differences between genders but it could have something to do with what with women do during our off time. For instance, when we're off we continue to do stressful tasks like taking care of children, cooking and cleaning, paying bills, etc. while men often can go home and relax.
To top it off, even though we're working long hours we still are getting paid less than our male counterparts. So not only are we trying to work long hours like men, we are putting ourselves at a higher risk for diabetes and getting paid less.
Being a female who has a family history in diabetes (literally almost every woman on my mom’s side has it) and being a person who has worked over 40 hours a week for as long as I can remember, this article really hit home for me. I need to really evaluate what’s important to me and figure out how I can live my best life!
So the next time you think about staying late to finish a task, leave - it's not worth your health.
Love, Brown Girl
"Diabetes... Don't nobody got time for that" -Brittany D. Dunlap
To read the full article, click here: https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/02/health/diabetes-long-hours-women-study/index.html