A new study finds self-employed women have fewer cardiovascular disease risks than their salaried peers, while other research shows climate-linked cancers and environmental toxins escalate broader threats to women’s health.
A woman’s body keeps the score. Not just of her choices, or her genetics, or her access to health care. Increasingly, the score reflects the very conditions under which she works and the climate she lives in. And a growing body of research is beginning to quantify what many women already intuit: the systems built around them may not be working in their favor. But changing how and where they work might.
According to a new peer-reviewed study published in BMC Public Health, women who are self-employed exhibit fewer cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors than women who work for others. The findings are among the first to rely not on self-reported data — which is often subject to bias — but on biological and physical health markers drawn from a nationally representative sample of nearly 20,000 working adults. The implications are profound: the structure of a woman’s work life may not just influence her schedule or sense of purpose, but her long-term heart health as well.
For white women, self-employment was linked to a 7.4 percentage point decline in obesity, a seven-point drop in physical inactivity, and a 9.4 percentage point decrease in poor sleep duration. Women of color also showed significant health gains: self-employment was associated with a 6.7 percentage point drop in poor diet, a 7.3 point reduction in physical inactivity, and an 8.1 point decline in insufficient sleep.
“There is a relationship between self-employment and heart disease risk factors and this relationship seems to be stronger in women relative to men,” Dr. Kimberly Narain, lead author of the study and assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said in a statement. “It is imperative to increase our understanding of how the work environment gets under our skin so we can come up with ways to ensure that everyone has access to a healthy work environment.”
The health benefits were not universal. While white men also saw a modest drop in diet-related CVD risk factors and hypertension, self-employed men of color did not see the same gains. The authors hypothesize this may be due to limited access to financial capital, higher barriers to entry, and reduced mentorship opportunities — factors that could hinder long-term success and contribute to chronic stress.
The study arrives amid a broader reckoning over women’s health and the less-visible risks they face. Increasingly, climate change is emerging as one of those threats. A recent study published in Frontiers in Public Health tracked rising temperatures and female cancer rates across 17 countries in the Middle East and North Africa and found that breast, ovarian, uterine, and cervical cancer rates — and deaths — rose significantly with each degree Celsius of temperature increase.
“As temperatures rise, cancer mortality among women also rises — particularly for ovarian and breast cancers,” said Dr. Wafa Abuelkheir Mataria, first author of the study and researcher at the American University in Cairo. While the per-degree increases were modest, the public health impact was anything but. For each degree of warming, mortality rose by as much as 332 deaths per 100,000 people. Incidence rose too: ovarian cancer rates increased by up to 280 cases per 100,000 people per degree.
“Temperature rise likely acts through multiple pathways,” said Dr. Sungsoo Chun, co-author of the study. “It increases exposure to known carcinogens, disrupts healthcare delivery, and may even influence biological processes at the cellular level. Together, these mechanisms could elevate cancer risk over time.”
Notably, the countries with the most pronounced increases in cancer cases and mortality were also among those facing the highest temperature extremes — including Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. The study accounted for GDP per capita to control for differences in healthcare access and infrastructure, and still found significant associations between rising heat and worsening cancer outcomes. In other words, more money does not always mean more protection.
It also complicates the idea that screening and treatment advances can fully explain the increases. Better screening, for instance, typically reduces mortality by catching cancers earlier. But here, death rates climbed alongside incidence, suggesting that environmental stressors, not just diagnostic improvements, are driving the trend.
These findings add to a growing category of overlooked women’s health risks. Autoimmune conditions, for example, disproportionately affect women, and often go undiagnosed for years. Long covid has also been shown to impact women at higher rates than men, with female patients comprising the majority of those experiencing persistent post-viral symptoms, according to recent studies.
Add to that increasing concerns around endocrine-disrupting chemicals, especially in cosmetics and plastics, and the picture becomes more urgent. The CDC has noted widespread exposure among women of reproductive age to phthalates and parabens — compounds linked to hormone disruption, fertility issues, and certain cancers. Despite growing consumer awareness, U.S. regulations around these chemicals remain significantly looser than those in the European Union.
Together, these studies sketch out a chilling reality: modern life may be quietly eroding women’s health in ways still underrecognized by mainstream medicine. But the research also points toward levers for change.
If women’s work lives make them sick, adjusting the structure of those jobs — or choosing self-employment — could offer protective benefits. If the environment is amplifying cancer risk, then climate resilience must become a foundational part of public health planning.
As Dr. Chun put it, “Strengthening cancer screening programs, building climate-resilient health systems, and reducing exposure to environmental carcinogens are key steps. Without addressing these underlying vulnerabilities, the cancer burden linked to climate change will continue to grow.”
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