If your Monday morning commute is feeling particularly bleak, it may not simply be a case of the capitalism blues. New research suggests that pervasive economic discrimination against women in the workforce is having marked effects on their mental and physical health, too. In other words, the pay gap isn’t just damaging your wallet—it’s also messing with your body and mind. Until now there has generally been little exploration of this link, but researchers are finally beginning to join the dots, and the picture isn’t pretty.
The so-called gender pay gap is a well-documented phenomenon across the developed world, with statistics from Australia, the United States and Europe indicating wage disparities of 13 to 23 percent between men and women in full-time work.
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Meantime, studies comparing levels of both mental and physical health between the sexes have repeatedly shown poorer standards for women—for example, women in England and Australia are up to twice as likely to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder than men. The economic factors behind this seem to have been overlooked by researchers for decades, but studies are now beginning to identify what could be a major cause of women’s suffering: their pay packets.
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