[Why are female physicians more often absent from work due to sickness than their male colleagues?]

In order to investigate reasons for sick leave a survey was carried out in 1987 among all general practitioners on regular salary from the municipality of Oslo. 74% returned the questionnaire, 43 men and 38 women. Females had taken sick leave more often than their male colleagues during the last six months. The difference was statistically significant. Theoretically plausible reasons for this discrepancy were treated by logistic regression. The reasons that female general practitioners were more absent from work seemed to be a higher prevalence of headache, anxiety, insomnia and tiredness compared with men, and that women responded more often than men to such health problems by absence from work.