Egypt: Employed women report more coital frequency, more occurrence of spontaneous desire and being more able to obtain orgasm than unemployed women

Does Employment Affect Female Sexuality? Enas H. Abdallah, IhabYounis, Hala M. Elhady. Benha University Medical Journal, Sep 2020. DOI: 10.21608/bmfj.2020.18498.1119

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1305786559690571777

Abstract:
Introduction: Female sexual dysfunction (FSD) is a multifactorial condition that has anatomical, physiological, medical, psychological and social components. With increasing trend in the participation of women in the work force and due to the competing demands between work and family, the metaphor of work family conflict (WFC) as an increasing pressure in professional life has emerged. WFC seems to be more in women than men due to more overload and stress.

Aim of the work: to compare female sexuality between employed women and unemployed ones. Subjects and methods: The current study was a cross sectional study. The subjects of this study were sexually active married women. The tool of the study was a selfreport questionnaire.

Results: Employed women were higher in coital frequency than unemployed ones (60.2% & 39.4% respectively). Spontaneous desire was reported by 41% of employed women to occur once per week compared to 34.7% of unemployed ones. Among the employed women, 38.2% could reach orgasm in almost all their sexual encounters compared to 12.7% of unemployed ones. Among unemployed women, 10.4% reported sexual pain compared to 3.6% among employed ones.

Conclusion: Employed women have better sexual functioning than unemployed ones. Employed women have more coital frequency, more occurrence of spontaneous desire and are more able to obtain orgasm than unemployed women.

Keywords: employment, sexual dysfunction, women.

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In the present study, among unemployed group, 10.4% reported sexual pain compared to 3.6% among employed ones. This is consistent with a study which found that unemployment was a significant risk factor in reporting sexual problems, desire 60%, and pain problems 36.8% [24]. This result disagrees with another study[4] who reported sexual pain in working women to be 26.7% and suggested that there was a strong relation between job stress, anxiety and sexual dysfunction.

In our study, 7.2% of employed women experienced sexual harassment several times at work place. This finding is consistent Cochran and co-workers, [25] who revealed a reporting rate as low as 2%. In contrast, a study based on more than 86,000 respondents in the US, 58% of women reported having experienced potentially harassing behavior and 24% reported having experienced sexual harassment at work [26].