Sleep can Boost Women's Career Goals

“When women are getting a good night’s sleep and their mood is boosted, they are more likely to be oriented in their daily intentions toward achieving status and responsibility at work,” said lead author Leah Sheppard, an associate professor in WSU’s Carson College of Business. “If their sleep is poor and reduces their positive mood, then we saw that they were less oriented toward those goals.”

Sheppard and co-authors Julie Kmec of WSU and Teng Iat Loi of the University of Minnesota-Duluth conducted a study for the journal Sex Roles that involved more than 2,200 observations of full-time workers over two consecutive work weeks. Every day at midday, the participants were asked about their sleep the night before, their mood, and whether they intended to pursue positions of more authority, status, and influence at work. In the evenings, they were asked the same questions.

Throughout the trial, both men and women reported both good and bad sleep quality, notably with no gender difference in reported sleep quality. On days after a night of poor sleep, women, however, more frequently indicated lower aspirations to achieve more status at work.

Why Poor Sleep Affects Career Goals in Women

The specific reason why the impact of sleep affects mood and women’s career goals, but not men’s, is not well understood by the researchers. They believe it may have to do with gender differences in emotion management and cultural expectations- or some combination of these variables.

Cultural preconceptions of women as being more emotional can contribute to the neuroscientific finding that women tend to have less control over their emotions and more emotional reactivity than men. However, because males are often perceived as being more ambitious than women, there is more pressure on them to advance professionally. As a result, men may be less likely to be discouraged from their career goals by poor sleep quality.

How can Women Enhance Career Goals

But Sheppard added that there is some positive news for women who desire to advance in their careers. They may, for example, enhance their job aspirations by placing stronger boundaries around their work hours, practicing meditation to help with sleep and emotion control, and of course, just trying to get more sleep.

“It’s important to be able to connect aspirations to something happening outside the work environment that is controllable,” she said. “There are lots of things that anyone can do to have a better night’s sleep and regulate mood in general.”

Source: Medindia

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