Hearing impairment, working life conditions, and gender

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine differences and similarities in working conditions and health status between men and women with hearing impairments. This article is based on a material collected with a comprehensive questionnaire, looking at psycho-social work environments and health status and answered by a total of 406 patients at two audiological clinics in Sweden. Examination of the data reveals a pattern of unfavourable conditions for hearing-impaired persons/employees when compared to a reference group without auditory impairments. Hearing-impaired women frequently find themselves in extremely trying situations. Health status is worse for those who are hearing impaired as compared to the reference group, especially for hearing impaired women The concept "double workload" is discussed as a possible notion for further theoretical development of the issues discussed in this article.

Self-reported hearing difficulties, main income sources, and socio-economic status; a cross-sectional population-based study in Sweden

“…Women with hearing difficulties are often found to be worse off than their male counterparts [28,31,34,54], which is in line with our results. Women seem to perceive their hearing impairment as being more negative than men do [59,60], possibly because the disability is generally associated with men [61] and affects skills traditionally associated with women, namely communication and nurturing roles [62].…”

“…Hearing difficulties has previously been associated with poorer health [14,31,54], work-related stress [14,30,31,54], and work-related accidents [26,55-57], which may eventually lead to sickness absence [30,33] and disability pension [25,33,34]. On the other hand, transitions from paid employment to unemployment, long-term sick leave, and even maternal leave have been associated with increased psychological distress [58], which may cause health problems, including hearing difficulties [24].…”

Neural mechanisms of mental fatigue elicited by sustained auditory processing

“…Consistent with this view, performing a listening task in the presence of background noise has been shown to increase cognitive effort (perceived cost) in participants with normal hearing and hearing loss (Picou et al, 2017; Picou & Ricketts, 2014). Correspondingly, a growing body of literature suggests that sustained listening under a variety of adverse listening conditions (e.g., in noise, degraded stimuli, hearing impairment) can also lead to mental fatigue (e.g., Key et al, 2017; Alhanbali et al, 2017; Bess & Hornsby, 2014; Gellerstedt & Danermark, 2004; Hétu et al, 1988; Hornsby, 2013; Kramer et al, 2006). For instance, Antons et al (2012) found that 20 minutes of listening to degraded audio resulted in greater mental fatigue than listening to intact audio for the same duration.…”

Hearing and vision: Health in Sweden: The National Public Health Report 2012. Chapter 17

“…Younger, actively employed hearing-impaired people in particular often suffer from poorer health than their coevals [9]. Many people with hearing loss have a hard time coping with the demands of modern working life.…”