Table 1

Distribution of the study population and medically certified sickness absence episodes by sex and occupational class

	N		Person years		N of spells		N of spells/100 py
	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men
Manual workers	631	388	2579	1442	3053	1443	118.4	100.1
Routine non-manual workers	2264	137	9348	570	9614	416	102.8	73.0
Semi-professionals	1045	294	4257	1222	2775	652	65.2	53.4
Managers and professionals	1521	644	6164	2609	2802	810	45.5	31.0
All	5461	1463	22 347	5842	18 244	3321	81.6	56.8