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Abstract
Goals To describe the exposure to psychosocial risks at work and the consumption of psychotropic drugs and opioids among women working as cleaners; and to analyse the association between their exposure to psychosocial risks and drug use.
Methods Observational cross-sectional study based on an online survey (collected during April and May 2021) from the wage-earning population in Spain. In this study, only women working in manual occupations were included (n=3430). Working conditions and drug consumption of cleaning workers were compared with those of other manual workers through bivariate analysis. The adjusted prevalence ratios and the corresponding 95% CIs were estimated using Poisson regression models with robust variance.
Results Cleaning workers were older and had more problems making ends meet than other manual workers and were significantly more exposed to low possibilities for development (85.2 (95% CI 81.8 to 88.0)), high strain (51.9 (95% CI 47.3 to 55.9)) and low social support from colleagues (72.0 (95% CI 68.1 to 75.7)) and supervisors (61.7 (95% CI 57.3 to 65.6)). They also scored higher prevalence rates for the use of tranquillisers (37.7 (95% CI 32.0 to 43.3)) and opioids (33.3 (95% CI 27.9 to 38.6)) consumption indicators. This consumption was associated significantly with high strain exposure and high insecurity over working conditions.
Discussion Under the umbrella of the 2012 labour reform, cleaning companies shift the pressure and burden they have on ordinary cleaning staff in the form of low wages and precarious working conditions. Our results imply that addressing adverse working conditions, mainly high strain and insecurity over working conditions, may significantly contribute to reducing the gender and social inequalities among cleaning workers.
- Occupational Health
- Women
Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request.
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Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request.
Footnotes
Contributors MU: conceptualisation, design of the study, formal analysis, interpretation, writing, approval of the final version, responsible for the overall content and guarantor. CL-S: writing—revision, discussion and approval of the final version. AA-G: writing, discussion and approval of the final version. LE-M: collection of data, writing, discussion and approval of the final version. AN-G: collection of data, interpretation, writing, discussion and approval of the final version. AB: conceptualisation, design of the study, writing, discussion and approval of the final version.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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