IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v10y2021i2p35-d486049.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Job Attributes and Mental Health: A Comparative Study of Sex Work and Hairstyling

Author

Listed:
  • Bill McCarthy

    (School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University Newark, 123 Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102-3094, USA)

  • Mikael Jansson

    (Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, University of Victoria, 2300 McKenzie Ave., Victoria, BC V8N 5M8, Canada)

  • Cecilia Benoit

    (Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, University of Victoria, 2300 McKenzie Ave., Victoria, BC V8N 5M8, Canada)

Abstract

A growing literature advocates for using a labor perspective to study sex work. According to this approach, sex work involves many of the costs, benefits, and possibilities for exploitation that are common to many jobs. We add to the field with an examination of job attributes and mental health. Our analysis is comparative and uses data from a panel study of people in sex work and hairstyling. We examined job attributes that may differ across these occupations, such as stigma and customer hostility, as well as those that may be more comparable, such as job insecurity, income, and self-employment. Our analysis used mixed-effects regression and included an array of time-varying and time-invariant variables. Our results showed negative associations between mental health and job insecurity and stigma, for both hairstyling and sex work. We also found two occupation-specific relationships: for sex work, limited discretion to make decisions while at work was negatively related to mental health, whereas for hairstyling, mental health was positively associated with self-employment. Our results highlight the usefulness of an inter-occupational labor perspective for understanding the mental health consequences of being in sex work compared to hairstyling.

Suggested Citation

  • Bill McCarthy & Mikael Jansson & Cecilia Benoit, 2021. "Job Attributes and Mental Health: A Comparative Study of Sex Work and Hairstyling," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-21, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:10:y:2021:i:2:p:35-:d:486049
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/2/35/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/2/35/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. de Jonge, Jan & Bosma, Hans & Peter, Richard & Siegrist, Johannes, 2000. "Job strain, effort-reward imbalance and employee well-being: a large-scale cross-sectional study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 50(9), pages 1317-1327, May.
    2. Cornelius A. Rietveld & Hans van Kippersluis & A. Roy Thurik, 2015. "Self‐Employment and Health: Barriers or Benefits?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(10), pages 1302-1313, October.
    3. Mausner-Dorsch, H. & Eaton, W.W., 2000. "Psychosocial work environment and depression: Epidemiologic assessment of the demand-control model," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 90(11), pages 1765-1770.
    4. Deering, K.N. & Amin, A. & Shoveller, J. & Nesbitt, A. & Garcia-Moreno, C. & Duff, P. & Argento, E. & Shannon, K., 2014. "A systematic review of the correlates of violence against sex workers," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 104(5), pages 42-54.
    5. Mak, Winnie W.S. & Poon, Cecilia Y.M. & Pun, Loraine Y.K. & Cheung, Shu Fai, 2007. "Meta-analysis of stigma and mental health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 245-261, July.
    6. Siddiqi, Arjumand & Zuberi, Daniyal & Nguyen, Quynh C., 2009. "The role of health insurance in explaining immigrant versus non-immigrant disparities in access to health care: Comparing the United States to Canada," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 1452-1459, November.
    7. Hatzenbuehler, Mark L. & Bellatorre, Anna & Lee, Yeonjin & Finch, Brian K. & Muennig, Peter & Fiscella, Kevin, 2014. "Structural stigma and all-cause mortality in sexual minority populations," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 33-41.
    8. Bell, Andrew & Jones, Kelvyn, 2015. "Explaining Fixed Effects: Random Effects Modeling of Time-Series Cross-Sectional and Panel Data," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(1), pages 133-153, January.
    9. Abel, Gillian M., 2011. "Different stage, different performance: The protective strategy of role play on emotional health in sex work," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(7), pages 1177-1184, April.
    10. Nikolova, Milena, 2019. "Switching to self-employment can be good for your health," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 664-691.
    11. Treloar, Carla & Stardust, Zahra & Cama, Elena & Kim, Jules, 2021. "Rethinking the relationship between sex work, mental health and stigma: a qualitative study of sex workers in Australia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    12. Martin Olsthoorn, 2014. "Measuring Precarious Employment: A Proposal for Two Indicators of Precarious Employment Based on Set-Theory and Tested with Dutch Labor Market-Data," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 119(1), pages 421-441, October.
    13. Hessels, Jolanda & Rietveld, Cornelius A. & van der Zwan, Peter, 2017. "Self-employment and work-related stress: The mediating role of job control and job demand," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 178-196.
    14. Prus, Steven G., 2011. "Comparing social determinants of self-rated health across the United States and Canada," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 50-59, July.
    15. Cecilia Benoit & Nadia Ouellet & Mikael Jansson & Samantha Magnus & Michaela Smith, 2017. "Would you think about doing sex for money? Structure and agency in deciding to sell sex in Canada," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 31(5), pages 731-747, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marco Caliendo & Daniel Graeber & Alexander S. Kritikos & Johannes Seebauer, 2023. "Pandemic Depression: COVID-19 and the Mental Health of the Self-Employed," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 47(3), pages 788-830, May.
    2. Milena Nikolova & Boris Nikolaev & Olga Popova, 2021. "The perceived well-being and health costs of exiting self-employment," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 1819-1836, December.
    3. Vicki L. Bogan & Angela R. Fertig & David R. Just, 2022. "Self-employment and mental health," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 855-886, September.
    4. Hessels, Jolanda & Rietveld, Cornelius A. & van der Zwan, Peter, 2017. "Self-employment and work-related stress: The mediating role of job control and job demand," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 178-196.
    5. Cecilia Benoit & Mikael Jansson & Michaela Smith & Jackson Flagg, 2017. "“Well, It Should Be Changed for One, Because It’s Our Bodies”: Sex Workers’ Views on Canada’s Punitive Approach towards Sex Work," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-17, May.
    6. Wolfe, Marcus T. & Patel, Pankaj C., 2022. "What's my age again? The association between self-employment and klotho protein," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 17(C).
    7. Susanna Toivanen & Rosane Härter Griep & Christin Mellner & Mikael Nordenmark & Stig Vinberg & Sandra Eloranta, 2019. "Hospitalization due to stroke and myocardial infarction in self-employed individuals and small business owners compared with paid employees in Sweden—a 5-year study," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 343-354, August.
    8. Mariano Rojas & Karen Watkins-Fassler & Lázaro Rodríguez-Ariza, 2022. "The Life Satisfaction of Owner-Manager Entrepreneurs When the Business of Business is not only Business," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 17(4), pages 2251-2275, August.
    9. Ardianti, Retno & Obschonka, Martin & Davidsson, Per, 2022. "Psychological well-being of hybrid entrepreneurs," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 17(C).
    10. Hessels, Jolanda & Rietveld, Cornelius A. & Thurik, A. Roy & van der Zwan, Peter, 2020. "The higher returns to formal education for entrepreneurs versus employees in Australia," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 13(C).
    11. Stephan, Meike & Demir, Cemre & Lasch, Frank & Vossen, Alexander & Werner, Arndt, 2023. "Psychological well-being of hybrid entrepreneurs: A replication and extension study using German panel data," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 20(C).
    12. Nicholas Litsardopoulos & George Saridakis & Yannis Georgellis & Chris Hand, 2023. "Self-employment experience effects on well-being: A longitudinal study," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 44(2), pages 454-480, May.
    13. Jolanda Hessels & Wim Naudé, 2019. "The Intersection Of The Fields Of Entrepreneurship And Development Economics: A Review Towards A New View," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 389-403, April.
    14. Miller, Carol T. & Solomon, Sondra E. & Varni, Susan E. & Hodge, James J. & Knapp, F. Andrew & Bunn, Janice Y., 2016. "A transactional approach to relationships over time between perceived HIV stigma and the psychological and physical well-being of people with HIV," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 97-105.
    15. Judite Goncalves & Pedro S. Martins, 2018. "The effect of self-employment on health: Evidence from longitudinal social security data," Working Papers 88, Queen Mary, University of London, School of Business and Management, Centre for Globalisation Research.
    16. Patel, Pankaj C. & Rietveld, Cornelius A., 2020. "The impact of financial insecurity on the self-employed’s short-term psychological distress: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 14(C).
    17. Peter Zwan & Jolanda Hessels & Martijn Burger, 2020. "Happy Free Willies? Investigating the relationship between freelancing and subjective well-being," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 475-491, August.
    18. Cecilia Benoit & Michaela Smith & Mikael Jansson & Priscilla Healey & Douglas Magnuson, 2021. "The Relative Quality of Sex Work," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 35(2), pages 239-255, April.
    19. Binder, Martin & Blankenberg, Ann-Kathrin, 2021. "Self-employment and subjective well-being," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 411, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    20. Jungsun Park & Hanjun Kim & Yangho Kim, 2021. "Factors Related to Psychological Well-Being as Moderated by Occupational Class in Korean Self-Employed Workers," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-15, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:10:y:2021:i:2:p:35-:d:486049. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.