Occupational women’s challenges in the science and technology: The Venezuelan case

Introduction:  Psychosocial and organizational demands of technical-scientific work have predictable health consequences mainly at the cardiovascular system and areas susceptible of being impacted for example for stress and other occupational risks’ factors. In Latin America, demands for women researchers at the Universities are increasing. The new politics on research could constitute major demands according to gender mainly in the psychosocial aspects. The relationship between occupational risks (organizational and psychosocial) and occupational demands on a sample of women included in the “Program for the Promotion of Researchers”-PPI-, of the University of Carabobo, Venezuela, and their health effects, was studied.    

Methods:  The total population of women qualified as PPI was 62 with a final sample of 26. A preliminary, descriptive, cross sectional study was done. The 26 researchers were evaluated using a self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive analysis, univariate (Chi square) and logistic regression were used.    

Results:  The most frequent PPI level was I. The most predominant research area was Biological and Health sciences (42,3 %); however, there are indicators of humanistic research increase. Level of satisfaction of “Personal relations at work” was considered “high” in 42,3 %. The most frequent “chronic health effect” were: muscle-skeletal (11,5 %), which agrees with several publications; followed by cardiovascular (7,7 %). When the predictor value for lifestyles for stress indicators was calculated, alcohol consumption and smoking resulted significant contributors (R2:0,518) for the indicator “face pain, earache and headache with no apparent reason”.    

Discussion:  Results show a clear progress of women with a higher academic level, qualifying in the higher category of professional and research careers. Findings of this investigation show also that temporomandibular alterations are positively correlated with stress indicators and negatively with satisfaction indicators. It is recommended a further study including more researcher’s women and men, in order to evaluate the results from a gender perspective.