The Politics of Stress: Public Visions, Private Realities

Stress has become as interesting an issue today as money, power, and sex. Why this is so may have to do with some surge in the numbers of people experiencing stressful feelings or the surge in the amount of stress generated in modern society. Actually, however, we do not know how many people felt stress in the past or how much they felt, and we do not know whether or not there has been an increase. But whether we have actually had more than our forebears, we are more articulate about stress and more cognizant of some of the determinants of it. Interest today may also have to do with the concern with the quality of life issues developed during the youth movements of the 1960s, followed by the quality of work-life movement begun in the 1970s. In fact today, while some people are seeking to improve the quality of their life on psychiatrists’ couches and with courses in assertiveness training, unions are bargaining for a better quality of work life, and management is thinking of ways to create better work lives for employees that will result in more productivity and a more amiable work force.

Stress is also a code word today, like money, power, and sex. Warnings about it, myths about it, and views about who has it are often used to control. Current views about stress are of particular interest when viewed as a women's problem. From my perspective, views about stress are used as threats by insiders to warn people on the outside that only those with the “right stuff” can “make it” in the arenas of power and command. The dangers of stress are posed differently to men at the top who are regarded as adventurous risk takers who confront the possible dangers in their terms of active duty in boardrooms, operating rooms, courtrooms, legislatures, and