Background
As a female-specific health indicator, a normal menstruation pattern is regarded as a pivotal indicator of women’s whole health status. Menstruation status is affected by biological factors [
1,
2] and also psychological status [
3]. Long hours at work are a source of occupational stress that increases psychological distress [
4,
5], together with an increased risk of work-related injuries [
6] and poor health outcomes [
7]. However, hormones controlling the normal system of menstruation may alleviate the risk of cardiovascular disease for those in their reproductive years [
8]. Therefore, menstrual problems can be considered as an important health indicator for female workers. A disordered secretion of these hormones due to work may impact women’s health and also increase risk to several chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorder [
8]. Thus, it would be meaningful to assess menstruation status among female workers.
Japan leads the world in dealing with an aging society and a declining birthrate. Thus, the Japanese government wants to encourage more women to participate in the labor force. However, our previous study demonstrated that there was no healthy workers’ effect among female workers in Japan [
9]. In that study, we assessed lifestyles, knowledge and behaviors of healthcare, and subjective health status, but did not assess women specific health, like menstrual health status. In addition to the situation where many women resign upon giving birth, there may be other factors that influence the participation of women in the workforce in Japan. Looking at various specific health issues that impact women, such as menstrual cycle, may help to meet the goal of including more women in the workforce of Japan.
In Japan, despite an advanced educational background (43% in the prime age bracket have more than an upper-secondary education) [
10], many Japanese women do not enter into economic activity. Although women’s participation in the workforce has increased recently, due in part to the Equal Employment Opportunity Law, revised in June 1985, more than half of working women are in precarious work positions that form the base of the gig economy, with part-time, short-term, unguaranteed, or outsourced work arrangements [
11]. A precarious work arrangement reflects a lower work status for women because the economic rewards are inferior in terms of income and social security compared to that of regular workers [
12]. In addition to their socioeconomic vulnerability, women’s status is unstable, with a higher frequency of leaving jobs, and changing workplaces. Therefore, it is difficult to determine the health of female workers, except for those in certain particular occupations, such as nurses. Thus, it is important to pursue further research regarding work conditions and health for women in the workforce.
Worker health, when considering gender differences, is affected not only by work conditions, but also family circumstances. An imbalance between work and family demands may be a strong risk factor for female workers [
13], and it has been suggested that the younger generation especially are tasked with the multiple roles of housework and mother [
14] than male are workers. Meanwhile, some argue that male workers are subjected to more work stress that induces lifestyle diseases and mental disorders.
The hypothesis of our study was that female workers spending a longer time at work have more problems with menstruation and other health status items than do female workers working shorter times. Along with other developed countries, the EU (European Union) has indicated an interval time to regulate work conditions, with a minimum daily rest period of 11 consecutive hours over every 24 h, to control excessive work and guarantee sufficient time for rest [
15]. In Japan, long work hours are debated as a social issue [
16], and consequently, the MHLW has introduced this regulation as a challenge to employers to apply workplace policies that provide for a continuous rest time of 11 h or more over a 24-h period, and this is called Interval Time (“
Kinmu Kan Interval”) [
17]. In this study, we assessed whether such an interval time was effectively in place for women at work and possible effects on their health status.
Discussion
In this study, we compared the health status among female workers with and without a sufficient work interval time between being off work and resuming their daily work, at 11 h/day. This metric is based on a regulation by the EU and the goal set by the government of Japan. Workers who had a short interval time of less than 11 h/day showed a significantly higher prevalence of anxiety about health and dissatisfaction with their health. For menstruation status, only abnormal menstruation cycles were observed as more prevalent among workers in the short interval group compared to the long interval group. However, this association disappeared when biological confounding factors were adjusted in the multivariable regression model. Dysmenorrhea symptoms that decrease work efficiency did not show a significant association with less than 11 h of interval time.
Abnormal menstrual cycles, a particular health status factor for women, can be impacted by an insufficient amount of rest, and the prevalence showed a tendency toward a positive association with a short interval time. However, the association was weaker than those of subjective and psychological health indicators such as anxiety and dissatisfaction with health. Moreover, when biological factors were adjusted in the risk assessment model, menstrual cycle was not an influential factor. Menstrual cycle is a kind of biological clock [
22] that is mainly regulated by hormonal secretion in cooperation with the hypothalamus-pituitary-ovary axis. Therefore, it is likely that deterioration of the menstrual cycle according to a short interval time has a complex mechanism.
The interval time between being off work and resuming daily work is considered to be a substitute for total labor hours. At the same time, it also can include late-night and/or early-bird shifts at work. We excluded shift time workers (
n = 143, about 14% of workers who have kept their job in the same style for the last 1 year) from analysis in this study, but possible long labor hours among the short interval group in this study might be similar to shift work. In fact, several studies reported that shift work impacted circadian rhythms [
23,
24], and a study assessing Chinese female nurses observed the effect of rotating-shift work on irregularity in menstrual cycles [
25]. A systematic review affirmed the effect of shiftwork on menstrual disruption, not only in terms of abnormal cycles, but also spontaneous pregnancy loss [
26]. Another study showed that night work itself did not show a significant association with an irregular menstrual cycle [
27]. Therefore, future research with a detailed study design is warranted to assess the effect of interval time on female health.
Dysmenorrhea symptoms, another health status factor for women, did not have a steady association with interval time. The reason for the lack of a significant association with menstruation indicators might be the same as for menstrual cycles that are affected strongly by biological factors. The lack of statistical power was true for these weak associations, because the number of workers of the short interval time group was very small (7.3% of total study participants, n = 505). More than anything else, menstrual cycle disorder is more easily recognizable than dysmenorrheal symptoms, because the former is the result of a day count, and the latter is often associated with pain. If workers recognize an impact to their health, it may be possible to change the work interval time.
Anxiety about health was an important subjective symptom among the working-age population because this cohort was exposed to many sources of psychological distress [
18]. In addition, anxiety and depression are common diseases among women of a reproductive age [
28‐
32]. These psychological disorders can occur with pregnant and postpartum women, and one possible mechanism may come from imbalances in hormone excretion. Previous studies about shift-work workers suggest a negative effect of work during the night that confuses the circadian rhythm and causes mental health issues such as insomnia, anxiety, and depression [
23,
24]. The short work interval time in this study could also cause such mental health problems among workers.
We used dissatisfaction with health in this study to explore the comprehensive life status of the participants. According to a previous study, satisfaction with health was predicted by symptoms and present medication [
19]. A recent study found an association with life satisfaction [
20]. Both studies observed a steady association between satisfaction and health and health-related behaviors, called good practices, such as having exercise, no snacks, and maintaining a good BMI. Therefore, the positive association of health dissatisfaction with a short interval time of less than 11 h/day indicated in this study may reflect a deterioration of worker quality of life. Together with anxiety, a short interval time could have a deleterious effect on the psychosocial health status of workers.
This study has several limitations. First, all variables were measured thru self-reports. According to other questionnaire-based research that relied on mailed surveys or interviews, the observed result should be interpreted as in the range of subjective health status. Thus, classification errors were likely because we divided the participants into short and long interval time groups based on self-reported answers; They were not derived from actual data regarding attendance at each workplace.
Second, all participants were adult women who had graduated from a university, which may have affected the generalisability of the results because such people often come from higher-income families [
33] and could engage in occupations with better conditions, such as those that are more discretionary, controllable, less demanding, and of a higher income than other typical occupations. In fact, the labor participation rate was 78.6% in this study population, which was much higher than that of women overall in Japan, which is 48.4% in statistical estimates by the government [
11]. Importantly, the comparisons here and in following comparisons should be done carefully because the age distribution was different. The study participants were rather younger than those in the governmental statistics. In addition, the percent of regular employment of this study population was higher (72.0%) than that from governmental estimates (44.7%). Most of the study population (73.5%) were engaged in specialist occupations and highly technical jobs, including as teachers in elementary school to graduate school. Thus, it was difficult to say that they were representative of the typical job status of Japanese women overall, where the percent of these occupations has been estimated at 16.4%. Thus, the observation in this study from the view point of health status and the effect of short interval time might be further weakened by such advantageous working conditions. Overall, however, our results can be generalised as representative of well-educated women, a group whose numbers are expected to increase in the future.
We recruited study participants by asking for voluntary participation, and 16.5% of the candidate subjects showed a willingness to participate. Moreover, the final response rate was 15.4%. Thus, from the perspective of selection bias, the study participants may have held positive attitudes towards work and health and be more health conscious than those who did not participate, because limited information about the study purpose was given and several key words were provided, such as employment status and health, in our recruitment efforts. The effect of these attitudes is ambiguous, and our findings might be biased by it. Such self-selection bias could work in both directions, and it would not be evident which effect was stronger.
Moreover, we did not use standardized psychological scales to assess the relationship between interval time and a worker’s metal health status. This analysis was a second attempt to use the same dataset [
9], and the first objective of this survey data had focused on employment status and general health status, including lifestyle and health knowledge, and was not focused on mental health, and thus employed different scales. In future studies, it would be better to use standardized psychological scales for assessment of the health effect of interval time.
Finally, our study design was neither longitudinal nor interventional. A cross-sectional study cannot identify a causal effect relationship between work conditions and health status. Therefore, further studies are needed to better validate the effect of interval time on workers’ health.