Why Some Women Are More Prone to Work Addiction Than Others

This study surveyed 556 women in Poland, measuring their personality traits, symptoms of depression, and risk of work addiction using established questionnaires. Women higher in neuroticism, meaning a tendency toward anxiety and emotional reactivity, showed greater risk of work addiction, and depressive symptoms explained roughly a third of that connection, suggesting low mood is part of what drives the compulsive pull toward work rather than being only a consequence of it. Extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness showed a similar pattern, working partly through depressiveness rather than acting alone. As a cross-sectional survey of one national group, it captures an association at a single point in time rather than proving which comes first, the personality pattern, the low mood or the overwork. For a woman who recognises herself in the drive to keep working past the point of good sense, it offers a useful reframe: work addiction is not simply about willpower or ambition, it is entangled with mood in ways worth naming and addressing directly.