Background: There are studies reporting the adverse effects of working outside the house on women’s mental health. As the mental health is affected by the structure and culture of each society, this study was conducted to compare the mental health of housewives and working woman in Yazd county, Iran (2010).

  Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was done in Yazd county in 2010. Three hundred women were studied in two groups group 1 consisted of 150 housewives and group 2 included 150 working women. The symptom checklist 90 (SCL-90) questionnaire was utilized for testing their mental health. SPSS-15 was used for analyzing the data.

  Results : The results indicated that working women had better mental health than housewives (p= 0.0001). Moreover among the working women, the medical group had better mental health than the other groups (p= 0.006). There was no significant relationship between SCL-90 score and the number of children and also working history of women. But, there was a significant relationship between mental health of working women and their husbands´ satisfaction of their jobs (p=0.002).

Conclusion: Findings of this study showed that working women have better mental health than housewives. Also a significant association was found between the type of job and working women’s mental health.