The impact of increased teaching load on the subjective well-being of female teachers in Russia and Italy

The purpose of the study is to reveal the nature of the connection between the subjective well-being of female teachers and their attitude towards work in the form of the importance of professional success and assessment of their own professional competence when working overtime. The study involved young and middle-aged female teachers from Russia (N = 600) and Italy (N = 122), who worked in secondary schools. Significant differences in the organizational working conditions of Italian female teachers are the smaller amount of overtime work. In addition, female teachers from Italy voluntarily agree to work overtime. The study was conducted using a pre-tested authors’ questionnaire, including questions combined with direct scaling. The questions concerned the necessity of overtime work, the volume of hours per week, self-assessment of psychophysiological and socio-psychological indicators of subjective well-being, self-assessment of one’s professional competence and the importance of professional success. The study was conducted using a pre-tested authors’ questionnaire, which included questions combined with direct scaling. The questions concerned the necessity of overtime work, its volume of hours per week, one’s own assessment of psychophysiological, social and psychological indicators of subjective well-being, as well as assessment of one’s professional competence and the significance of professional success. The main methods of statistical processing are the nonparametric Mann — Whitney U test and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. It is shown that the organizational conditions in schools in Russia and Italy differ. In Italy, teachers’ overtime work is lower and unpaid. In Russia, women work more overtime than men (54 % versus 36 %). In Italy, the percentage of women and men working overtime is the same (28 % respectively). The range of overtime work for female teachers from Russia was 2—40 hours per week. For female teachers from Italy, the range of overtime work was 3—10 hours. For both groups, statistically significant positive relationships between subjective well-being and attitude towards work were common. The most significant factor determining subjective well-being was the support of female teachers by the workforce. The same factor reduces the impact of stress, which is reflected in the self-assessment of the state of the nervous system and the general feeling of fatigue from work. Statistically significant differences were obtained in relation to the relationship between subjective well-being and overtime work. Russian women revealed a weak, but still statistically significant inverse relationship between fatigue and overtime work, on the one hand, and subjective well-being, on the other. A negative relationship was revealed between work fatigue and subjective well-being. Female teachers from Italy showed the opposite results. All of the above connections are positive, i. e. teachers in the organizational conditions of Italian schools consider overtime work as an indicator of their professional demand. Italian female teachers perceive the amount of overtime work and work fatigue as elements of job satisfaction that have a positive impact on their professional competence. Low indicators of subjective well-being of Russian female teachers indicate an urgent need to revise organizational conditions and acceptable limits for increasing the teaching load both to maintain health and to increase motivation for professional growth, blocked by fatigue and stress.