ROLE SATISFACTION AND ROLE STRESS OF WORKING AND NON-WORKING WOMEN

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Date
2006
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ACHARYA N.G. RANGA AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY RAJENDRANAGAR, HYDERABAD
Abstract
Women play a number of roles in the family, at work and in the society as a whole. Roles refer to the culturally described patterns of behaviors including duties expected or required for a person behaving in specific social situations. If there is going to be any analysis with life as a whole for married women, then it must be in particular domains of life like marital life, family life, social life, recreational life and job/work life. Married working and nonworking women play a number of roles in the family, at work and in the society as a whole. As a result of multiple role demands, the married women should concentrate on the allocation of time and resources, which are based on the priority of one role over the other. There is more satisfaction with the job when the expectations for performances are fulfilled. When multiple role demands exceeds her available resources. She cannot do justice demands to all the roles. The consequences of this are a cognitive state of role stress, which is a felt difficulty of fulfilling role obligations. Role satisfaction and Role stress of working and non-working women was influenced by age, education, monthly income of family, occupation of spouse, length of service, number of children and working hours. Hence, the present study is taken up with the objectives to study the Role satisfaction and Role stress of working and non-working women. The specific objectives were taken up to study the a) Role satisfaction of working and non-working women b) Role stress of working and non-working women c) Differences between working and non-working women regarding role satisfaction and role stress. d) Relative magnitude of Role satisfaction and Role stress of working and non-working women. e) Relationship of selected variables with regard to Role satisfaction and Role stress. Ex-post facto research design was adopted for the present study. The total size of the sample was 100, which included 50 working and 50 nonworking women from twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. The sample selected was married, middle-income group with minimum one child. An interview schedule was developed by modifying the extended satisfaction with life scale (ESWLS) developed by Bernard. S. Gorman (1996). In the present study five domains viz., Marital, Family, Recreational, Social and Job/work life were taken with three-point continuum to measure the Role satisfaction and Role stress of working non-working women. The scale measuring the relative magnitude of role satisfaction and role stress contains 89 items that is rated on five-point continuum. The results of the study revealed that majority of the respondents were in the age range of 26-35 years. The educational status of workingwomen was higher than that of non-working women. They had monthly income of Rs.10,000-Rs.15,000. Majority of the workingwomen had a length of service of 10 years and above while non-working had duration of married life of 2-4 years. Most of the working and non-working women had two children. Majority of working women working hours of 6-8 hours while non-working women working hours of 8-10 hours. The workingwomen were highly satisfied than non-working women in the domain of job/work life where as in the domains of marital life, family life, recreational and social life, both the working and non-working women were on par with each other. Role stress was higher for workingwomen than nonworking women in the domain of job/work life. Whereas in the domains of marital life, family life, recreational life and social life, both the working and non-working women were on par with each other. The relativity of satisfaction is more than stress in marital life, family life and recreational life of working and non-working women, where as level of satisfaction and stress were equal in social life and job/work life of both working and non-working women. Both working and non-working women had a ratio of 75 per cent satisfaction and 25 per cent stress in their role performance in the domains of marital life, family and recreational life while in social life and job/work life, the probable ratio of satisfaction to stress is 50 per cent and 50 per cent. As the educational level increased the role stress decreased. As length of service increased role stress decreased for both working and non-working women. Majority of the working and non-working women had problem of heavy workload at home/at job place. Majority of the workingwomen had problem of taking care of children while non-working women had problem of feeding/serving food to children. Majority of the respondents had problem of misunderstandings with in-laws. Most of workingwomen were not facing any problem with their partners while non-working women had the problem of spending time with their partners. Most of the women received help from their husbands. Majority of the partners of women had the positive personality traits of helping and caring nature. Most of the women have satisfaction in their life due to having supportive husband and children. Most of the women had stress in their life due to heavy workload at home and at job place. Majority of the women adopted doing prayer and going to temple as a coping mechanism. Majority of the workingwomen felt that workingwomen had more life satisfaction while nonworking women felt that non-working had more life satisfaction. Majority of the respondents felt that workingwomen had more stress in their life. This study helps us to know the factors contributing to role satisfaction and role stress of working and non-working women and it creates awareness among the families to realize their problems. It gives an empirical evidence of factors leading to satisfaction and stress in their role performance. It helps the family members to assist and cooperate the working and non-working women in performing various activities and thereby reduce the workload on women. It helps the women to maintain harmonious relationship with the family members by making certain adjustment to the other sphere of life. It helps the working and non-working women to efficiently analyze their resources viz., time, energy, finance and other in dealing with the conflicting situations and avoid stress. From this research it can be concluded that workingwomen had more role satisfaction and role stress than non-working women in the domain of job/work life.
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Keywords
ROLE, SATISFACTION, ROLE, STRESS, WORKING, NON-WORKING, WOMEN
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