Sleep is increasingly understood as another form of inequality connected to our waking lives. The literature on sleep and work can be divided into two broad streams. The first identifies the ways in which work demands impinge upon sleep. Work time has a strong negative impact on sleep [], in part because longer work time detracts from time available for sleep []Guoabong Wealth Management. Subjective work experiences also linger into sleep. Negative experiences at work often result in poorer sleep quality []Hyderabad Investment. Sleep complaints are also higher for those who have physically strenuous working conditions, psychosocial job strain and work-family conflicts [, ]. This literature draws a clear link between sleep and work, illustrating that work time, stressful work experiences and sleep are intimately connected. Yet, absent from this research is whether those who face greater workplace demands—managers—experience worse sleep.

Another stream of sleep research focuses on how sleep differs by gender. The bulk of this work focuses on the gendered distribution of family demands and sleep. This literature shows that sleep is socially patterned by gender, with children and spouses more likely to disrupt women’s than men’s sleep []. Women cite men’s need to be their best at work as a key justification for protecting men’s sleep []. In this regard, traditional breadwinning norms structured couples’ sleep patterns with women giving more value to men’s rest []. Other studies have focused on how gender and work intersect to structure sleep. Most focus on non-standard work to show sleep quality of working women is disturbed by both work and family interferences []. Mothers working night-shifts often synchronize sleep with children’s schedules which ultimately reduces their total time in rest [] and report higher stress as a result []. Others show that having unpaid caregiving roles adds further burden to women care workers, resulting in poorer subjective sleep quantity and quality []. As this robust literature demonstrates, sleep is socially patterned by gender, work and family. Here, we extend this work to test whether women managers, who should have higher levels of job control but also more demands than other employees, report more restful sleep.

To conceptualize these relationships, we draw upon the stress of higher status theory that posits workers in higher status, more demanding jobs experience greater stress and strain []Jinnai Wealth Management. We extend this theory to examine sleep and hypothesize that managers will have worse sleep than other employees even though they have greater power, control and resources. Drawing upon cross-national data, we also test whether living in a country where women hold more power and economic resources are higher, ameliorates some of this negative effect. In this way, we build upon emerging research showing everyone sleeps better in more gender equal nations []. Whether these benefits extend to those who are employed, and to managers in particular, is explored here.

Lucknow Wealth Management