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It may not be surprising that working women feel more guilt than men do when work intrudes into their home-life. Technology has paved the way for work to make its way into the home after office hours through e-mails, phone calls and text messages, and according to new research from the University of Toronto, women pay a higher toll for these interruptions in the form of psychological distress.

Women are just as proficient as men at managing the responsibilities of both work and home. However, they suffer more twinges of guilt when receiving work-related contact at home. According to Paul Glavin, a doctoral student at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study, “This guilt seems to be at the heart of their distress.” The findings of the study were recently published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

For their study, Glavin and colleagues analyzed data gathered from 1,042 working American adults in the 2005 Work, Stress and Health Survey. Findings showed that women who received frequent contact at home from supervisors, co-workers or clients reported higher levels of psychological distress, whereas men were less affected. The more work-related calls and emails women received after hours, the more guilt and distress they felt.

Upon further analysis, the researchers expected to link the reason for the gender difference to a greater interference of family responsibilities among women, however women were just as adept at balancing their work and family lives as were men. Instead, the difference was observed to be how women felt about being contacted at home. They were far more likely to feel guilty about handling work issues at home than were men, even if there was no interference with their family lives.

Scott Schieman, a co-author of the report and a professor at the University of Toronto, acknowledged, “Levels of distress and levels of guilt are low overall” and that the study findings remained consistent no matter the women’s ages, marital status, parental status or socio-economic level. Schieman also pointed out that even though women have joined men in becoming financial providers, they continue to have different expectations than about the separation of work and home-life. He explained that “These forces may lead some women to question or negatively evaluate their family role performance when they’re trying to navigate work issues at home.”

In their report on the study, the authors wrote, “Our results demonstrate that guilt mediates the impact of work contact on distress for women. To our knowledge, ours is the first study of a broad cross-section of American workers to document the role of guilt in these processes.”

By nature, women are the nurturers and caregivers, and are ruled by emotion. This may offer insight into guilt feelings over work intrusions into home-life. Finding ways to relieve stress and anxiety may help to promote a more positive outlook for dealing with life’s interruptions whether work related or not. Get some exercise, take a little time to relax, and step back to see the big picture in life. In other words, don’t sweat the small stuff, because life is too short.