Women's work and health in Iran: a comparison of working and non-working mothers

This paper analyses research on the impact of work on mothers health in Tehran (Iran) within a role analytic framework. A survey was conducted of a representative sample of working and non-working mothers in Tehran in 1998 (N = 1065. 710 working mothers, and 355 non-working mothers). Three main explanatory factors were examined (socio-demographic, work and work-related, and social-life context variables) alongside a range of mental and physical health outcome variables. Unlike in the West, where women's paid work is generally associated with better health, statistically significant differences between working and non-working women were not found in Tehran. It is argued that this is a result of the counter-balance of the positive and negative factors associated with paid work, such as increased stress on one hand and self-esteem on the other. Iranian society's particular socio-cultural climate has contributed to this finding, with its dominant gender-role ideology; the priority and extra weight placed on women's traditional roles as wives and mothers, and the remarkably influential impact of husbands' attitudes on women's health. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.