Contrary to some beliefs, women who return to work after being diagnosed with breast cancer are not typically demoted or otherwise discriminated against in the workplace, new study findings show.

“We found little evidence that women diagnosed with breast cancer experience discrimination at work,” Dr. Elizabeth Maunsell of Laval University in Quebec City, Canada, and her colleagues write in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

“Thus, we believe that these results should provide some reassurance for working women who have just been diagnosed with breast cancer, especially women who are part of health and social systems similar to those in Canada,” they add.

Laws in Canada prohibit employers from discriminating due to a person’s handicap or health status, yet reports show that some cancer survivors say they have lost their job, been demoted, had their wages decreased or otherwise experienced problems after returning to work.

Maunsell and her team investigated such work-related discrimination in a study of 646 women, aged 18 to 59 years, with newly diagnosed breast cancer. For comparison, their study also included 890 similarly aged women without the disease.

At the start of the study, the two groups of women reported similar working conditions and all were employed. Three years later, the majority of women were still employed, the findings indicate. Only 21 percent of women with breast cancer and 15 percent of women in the comparison group were no longer working, Maunsell and her team report.

These women were not forced out of their jobs or otherwise discriminated against due to their breast cancer diagnosis, the study found. Most, including 84 percent of breast cancer survivors and 76 percent of the comparison women, chose to stop working.

Many of the breast cancer survivors said they no longer valued work as highly as they had in the past, before they developed cancer.

Further, working conditions did not deteriorate among those who chose to continue working, the researchers note. In fact, the breast cancer survivors reported greater earnings than did those in the comparison group.

Since health insurance in Canada is a national service provided by the government, rather than employers, the researchers note that their study “provides valuable new understanding of the natural history of labor force participation in the initial years after a breast cancer diagnosis in the absence of having to keep a job simply to maintain health insurance coverage.”

In a related editorial, Dr. Leslie R. Schover, of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, discusses several of the myths associated with breast cancer, including the idea that women diagnosed with the condition are often deserted by their male companions, are not able to have satisfying sex lives and that they face job discrimination.

Schover notes that Maunsell and her colleagues have debunked each of these myths in studies conducted over the past 10 years.

As for why there are so many misconceptions associated with a diagnosis of breast cancer, Schover told Reuters Health that if we know someone whose marriage collapsed or who lost her job sometime after being diagnosed with breast cancer, we tend to remember those things, not realizing that such experiences may not be typical of all women diagnosed with breast cancer.

In many cases, however, the quality of life for breast cancer survivors is similar to that of women who were never diagnosed with the condition, according to Schover. “Overall, the picture is pretty good,” she said.

Still, Schover writes, we should not “grow complacent about, nor should we trivialize, the emotional and physical pain of acute cancer treatment.”

SOURCE: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, December 15, 2004.