Department of Public Health Sciences, Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine, Kita 15, Nishi 7, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-8638, Japan.
Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2012 Apr;47(4):651-62. doi: 10.1007/s00127-011-0370-z. Epub 2011 Apr 8.
A higher prevalence of insomnia in females has been consistently demonstrated across countries and cultures. The aim of this study was to clarify whether gender differences in insomnia could be explained by gender differences in paid work and family responsibilities.
Participants were employees at two local governments in Hokkaido, Japan, who underwent annual health checkups from April 2003 to March 2004. All data were obtained via self-administered questionnaires. Insomnia was evaluated by the Athens Insomnia Scale. For work and family characteristics, occupation, working hours, days off, shift work, visual display terminal (VDT) work, occupational stress, marital status, hours spent on household tasks, childcare, and caregiving were chosen. Data from 7,451 participants (5,951 men and 1,500 women) were analyzed. Logistic regression analysis examined how much paid work and family responsibilities explained gender differences in insomnia.
The prevalence of insomnia in female subjects (31.0%) was significantly larger than in males (23.2%), but the gender difference disappeared after adjustment for paid work and family responsibilities. The results of stratified analyses revealed that significant gender differences were found only among workers with comparatively favorable work and family conditions, such as non-shift work, less than 6 h/day of VDT work, exposure to low levels of occupational stress, household tasks for less than 1 h/day, and not living with persons who needed care and support.
These results suggest that gender differences in insomnia are explained, in the main, by gender differences in work and family characteristics.
在不同国家和文化中，女性失眠的患病率普遍较高。本研究旨在阐明失眠的性别差异是否可以用有偿工作和家庭责任的性别差异来解释。
参与者是日本北海道两个地方政府的员工，他们在 2003 年 4 月至 2004 年 3 月期间接受了年度健康检查。所有数据均通过自我管理问卷获得。失眠采用雅典失眠量表进行评估。对于工作和家庭特征，选择了职业、工作时间、休息日、轮班工作、视屏显示终端（VDT）工作、职业压力、婚姻状况、家务时间、育儿和照顾。共分析了 7451 名参与者（5951 名男性和 1500 名女性）的数据。逻辑回归分析检查了有偿工作和家庭责任在多大程度上解释了失眠的性别差异。
女性受试者（31.0%）的失眠患病率明显高于男性（23.2%），但在调整有偿工作和家庭责任后，性别差异消失。分层分析的结果表明，只有在工作和家庭条件相对较好的工人中，才存在显著的性别差异，例如非轮班工作、每天少于 6 小时的 VDT 工作、职业压力低、每天少于 1 小时的家务劳动以及不与需要照顾和支持的人一起生活。
这些结果表明，失眠的性别差异主要由工作和家庭特征的性别差异来解释。
