Steep decline in health for women in 40s: study

Women’s health experts say challenges of balancing work and life are taking a dramatic toll

By Tiffany Crawford, Canwest News Service February 19, 2009

Canadian women experience a significant decline in health and quality of life between the ages of 40 and 50, compared to men of the same age, a Statistics Canada study suggests.

The study, released Wednesday, suggests women in their 40s experience more health problems—for example, illness linked to emotional stress—that lead to a poorer quality of life than their male counterparts during that particular decade, says one of the study’s authors, Heather Orpana.

The findings are no surprise to women’s health experts, who say many in this age group are worn out emotionally and physically from so-called “time-hunger” issues—trying to juggle careers, family and other caregiving responsibilities.

“They’re absorbing all of this in a very different way than from generations ago,” said Madeline Boscoe, executive director of the Canadian Women’s Health Network. “So much so that if you were to ask them questions about the quality of their life they would say they had lots of anxiety of some kind or another.”

According to the report’s data, from ages 40 to 50, women’s average health-related quality of life index fell by the equivalent of six percentage points, which is twice the threshold considered clinically important. The data for men in their 40s, on the other hand, did not drop significantly and instead the numbers stabilized, indicating a period of relative good health for men, but not for women.

“The numbers look like a really small decrease, but in actual fact it’s quite large in terms of the impact on one’s daily living,” said Orpana.

“It’s going from a state where you have pain or vision problems, for example, but you can still function to going to a state where you have pain or a vision problem that you can’t corr-

ect.”

Scott Schieman, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto, says men in their 40s may perceive they have a better quality of life because they are confident in their careers and have more senior positions.

“Men in that age group are hitting their stride in their work careers,” he said. “They are also more likely [than women] to get the resources and rewards from the work role and that could be bolstering their sense of well-being.”

While women and men may have equally demanding jobs, men may not have the same stress of child rearing, he said, adding that men may be less anxious about their jobs.

“There’s more sharing of responsibilities going on, but if the burden of child care is falling more on women and they are trying to work at the same time that’s probably taking a major toll as well.”

Another reason why men might see their health-related quality of life as good is because they tend to ignore their health more than women, suggests Dr. Tom Freeman, chair of family medicine at the University of Western Ontario.

“Our socialization is different that way. Women are worrying about birth control and pap smears and regularly visit physicians, but it isn’t until around age 50 that men take any action,” he said.

“There is lots of speculation about why they don’t live as long as women and you know you wonder if they paid more attention to their health they would perhaps live longer?”

The study measured eight attributes: vision, hearing, speech, ambulation, dexterity, emotion, cognition, and pain and discomfort.

Participants were asked to grade each attribute ranging from severely impaired to no impairment.

Orpana said one of the reasons for this drop among women could be attributed to the emotional domain.

For example, of the women studied, those who said they went from being “somewhat happy” in their 30s to “somewhat unhappy” in their 40s would experience that decline in quality of life.

The reasons could be linked to emotional stress including relationship problems, problems with children, job stress or financial problems, said Orpana.

“We know that women are more likely to experience depression than men,” she said. “So that really implies that we need to look further at women in that decade to see why their health quality of life is decreasing so much.”