Do women experience more stress than men? According to the research, the answer is yes.

Considered a pioneer in the field of mind/body medicine, Dr. Alice Domar conducts research focusing on the relationship between stress and various medical conditions, including infertility. Dr. Domar, Executive Director of the Domar Center for Mind/Body Health and Director of Integrative Care at Boston IVF, gave a presentation at the PepsiCo Summit for Female Executives and shared research on women and stress.

In this video, she discusses a few studies on stress and women. The first study, by researchers at Harvard University and Arizona State University, followed over 150 married couples for three months and asked them every night what they were stressed about on that day.

The results showed that men typically worry about three things in their life – their immediate family, their job and money. Women from the same study were found to worry about 12 different things.

According to Dr. Domar, there are five reasons women have more stress than men:

1. Women have more on their plate.
2. It’s harder to achieve a work/life balance since women do more work at home.
3. The media places a great emphasis on women’s weight, which leads to self-esteem issues and eating disorders.
4. Women worry about being perfect in every aspect of their life.
5. Women often feel guilty about self-nurturing.

To help women deal with stress, Dr. Domar suggests women ask themselves two questions:

1. What do I need?
2. Who can help me meet that need?

It’s important to remember that no one person can meet all of your needs. Once you identify your needs, make sure you give your needs the same priority as everyone else’s needs. The easiest way to do this is to put yourself on your to-do-list.

Watch Dr. Domar’s presentation to learn more about the research on stress and women’s health.