Influence of Occupational Stress among Women Professions

– A Performance Review

*M.LORS PORSEENA, **S.R.N. KALIPRASAD

Women in dual role, negotiate house work, child care and emotion work to support
their partners and to maintain and developed their relationships. Dual roles also engage in
status enhancement work to support their partner in their employment and face special
challenges as they try to bane work and family responsibilities. The emotional responses are
more significantly correlated to psychological stresses (Srivastava,1999) Long work hours,
inflexible work hours less than positive work environment are some of the factors that can
contribute to work family conflict. Occupational stress may originate from physical
properties of work environment (Holt,1982). Parental demands also create stress, especially
in situations. Where the level of social support is low (Ganster et al,1986).

The multiple roles have negative implication for women but not for men (Biernat&
Wortman, 1991); Greenlars, (1992). According to literature reviews, authors identified that
the effects of occupational stress acts as two-in-one technique for developing both work-
family balance and stress management. Hence this study was focused to investigate the
influencing effects of occupational stress on the women professional’s.

Occupational stress scale – Srivastava Singh (1984). The sample of 251 professionals
in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu were selected on simple random sample basis by considering
their different categories of lecturer’s, bank officers, doctors, engineers.

*M.LORS PORSEENA Assistant Professor, Department of Management Studies,

Karpagam Institute of Technology, Coimbatore.

**S.R.N. KALIPRASAD Assistant Professor, Department of Management Studies,

Karpagam Institute of Technology, Coimbatore.
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INTRODUCTION

Organizations that have goals to achieve require satisfied and happy staff,
(Oshagbemi, 2000). The researchers have confirmed a negative correlation between increased
stress or “burnout” and decreased job satisfaction (Belicki & Woolcott, 1996). In a study of
job satisfaction among public sector workers in the Denver Municipal Water Utility, which is
a leader in pay, benefits and job security, Leavitt (1996) found that although overall job
satisfaction was low, the water utility employees claimed to be satisfied in pay, benefits, and
job security. Leavitt does not discuss what factor is causing overall job satisfaction to be low.
Stress in organizations has been defined in terms of misfit between a person's skills and
abilities and the demands of his/her job and as a misfit in terms of a person's needs not being
fulfilled by his job environment.

Cooper and Marshall (1976) are of the view that by occupational stress is meant
environmental factors or stressors such as work overload, role conflict, role ambiguity, and
poor working conditions associated with a particular job. Caplan et al. (1975) define
organizational stress in general and role stress in particularCooper, Cooper and Eaker (1988)
have identified the following six major sources of stress at work.

 Factors Intrinsic to the job

 Role in the Organization
 Relationships at Work
 Career Development
 Organizational Structure and Climate
 Non-Work Factors

NEED AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

As is well known with working women, women professionals also face stress on
every day basis. There are pressures and demands of the job and then when they come back
home they have to battle with the equally perplexing problems and tensions of their family
and home. It’s like they are turned in to 24*7 working regime with no breaks to help them
relax. As a result they are always worried and fretting about some problem at work or
something that demands their attention at home. Working women have a dual role to play,
when they take up jobs. They have to care of their homes along with their outside
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employment. This puts strains on them affects their mental and physical well being. Breaking
Up of the joint family system in cities and towns has deprived the woman reliable support in
coping with house hold chores and care for children.

The present study has been conducted to know the factors of stress at home, the
factors of stress at work place and in the society, which is done among different categories of
women professionals in Coimbatore, like Doctors, Engineers, Lecturers, Bank officers. The
study explains about the factors related to stress and work life balance among women
professionals.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of the present study is to find out the influence of occupational stress and work
life balance of women professionals.

PROCEDURE

Participants were contacted personally and requested to respond. They were asked to read
carefully the instructions given in the questionnaires.

Participants were allowed to take their own time to complete the questionnaire.

METHODOLOGY

Primary data were collected from 251 professionals in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. For
collecting the first-hand information form the respondents, sample respondents were chosen
by simple random sampling method by considering their different categories of lecturer’s,
bank officers, doctors, engineers. The mean of age of respondents was 35 years. Their
average monthly income was Rs.15,000-30,000. The educational attainment of the
participants ranges from U.G, P.G, and Doctorate. Professions with experience range of 1- 15
years. The respondent’s range of number of dependents was 1-6. Their marital status was
Married, Single, and Separated.

Sixty five percent were at the younger age group (26 to 35 years old) and most of
them (58.6%) have been working in the institution from 4 to 10 years. Academicians made up
44.5% of the respondents and the second largest groups were executives (28%) and non-
executives (23.3%). Majority of the respondents (46.4%) possessed Bachelor degree, 26%
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with Masters and 19.1% with diploma. Minority was made up of those with doctorate (0.9%)
and others (5.5%).

Pareek (1983) pioneered work on the role stress by identifying as many as ten different types
of organisational role stresses. They are described here briefly.

1. Inter-Role Distance (IRD): It is experienced when there is a conflict between

organisational and non-organizational roles. 82% of the respondents strongly agree towards
the inter- role distance

2. Role Stagnation (RS): This kind of stress is the result of the gap between the demand to
outgrow a previous role and to occupy a new role effectively. It is the feeling of being stuck
in the same role. 63 % of the respondents felt that there was role stagnation in their present
role.

3. Role Expectation Conflict (REC): This type of stress is generated by different

expectations by different significant persons about the same' role; and the role occupant's
ambivalence as to whom to please. 56% of the respondents have a strongly agreed towards
that there was a role expectation conflict from different levels.

4. Role Erosion (RE): This kind of role stress is the function of the role occupant's feeling
that some functions which should properly belong to his / her role are transferred to / or
performed by some other role. This can also happen when the functions are performed by the
role occupant but the credit for them goes to someone else. 74% of the women respondent
felt that there was strong role erosion in the working organization.

5. Role Overload (RO): When the role occupant feels that there are too many expectations
from the significant roles in his/her role set, he/she experiences role overload. There are two
aspects of this stress: quantitative and qualitative. Among the 251 women professionals 87%
of the respondents were strongly agreed towards the role overload. And there were more
expectations from the superiors

6. Role Isolation (RI): This type of role stress refers to the psychological distance between
the occupant's role and other roles in the same role set. 68% of the respondents felt they were
agreeing to the statement and 12% of the respondent was strongly agreed towards the
statement.
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7. Personal Inadequacy (PI): This type of stress arises when the role occupant feels that
he/she does not have the necessary skills and training for effectively performing the functions
expected from his/her role. 53% of the respondent were strongly agree towards that the
organizations do not impart periodic training to enable the employees to cope with the fast
changes both within and outside the organization.

8. Self-Role Distance (SRD): 72% of the women employees strongly felt the role a person
occupies goes against her self-concept, then she feels self-role distance type of stress.

9. Role Ambiguity (RA): 67% of the women employees strongly felt that there is a lack of
clarity about the expectations of the role which may arise out of lack of information or
understanding.

10. Resource Inadequacy (Rin): 35% of the women employee strongly agrees that she is
not provided with adequate resources for performing the functions expected from his/her role.

SUGGESTION

Coping strategies at organizational level

Organizational role clarity: it can be overcome by defining each role clearly. Role Analysis
Technique helps to analyse what the job entails and what the expectations are. Breaking
down the job to its various components will clarify the role of the incumbent for the entire
system.

Job redesigns: properly designing the jobs and work schedules can help ease stress in the
individual and organization.

Stress reduction and stress management programmes: the main aim is to identify relevant
organizational stressors and thus reduce their effects by redesigning, reallocating workloads,
improving supervisory skills and also focus on training individual employees or their work
groups, to manage their stress symptoms in more effective ways.

Supportive Organizational climate: supportive organizational climate depends upon

managerial leadership rather than the use of power and money to control behaviour. The
focus is primarily on participation and involvement of employees in decision making proves.
It creates belongingness among the employees which helps them reduce their stress.
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Counseling: it is discussion of a problem by a counselor with an employee with a view to

help the employee cope with it better. Counseling seeks to improve employee’s mental health
by the release of emotional tension.

Coping strategies by individuals

Relaxation: proper relaxation is an effective way to adapt. Relaxation can take many forms.
One way to relax is to take regular vacations. A popular way of resting is to sit quietly with
closed eyes for about ten minutes every afternoon.

Time management: the idea is that the daily pressures can be eased if a person doses a better
job of managing time. One popular approach to time management is to make a list every
morning of the things to be done that day.

Role management: the individual works to avoid role overload, role ambiguity and role
conflict. A worker should accept extra work if he feels that he would be able to do that.

Mediation: mediation involves quiet, concentration inner thought in order to rest the body
physically and emotionally.

Support group: it is a group of friends or family members with whom a person can share his
feelings. Supportive family and friends can help people cope with routine types of stress on
an ongoing basis.

CONCLUSIONS

Problem is created with-in oneself and solution will also found with oneself. Striking
an appropriate balance between one’s personal and professional lives is bit of an art and
science too. Work Life balance concerns adjusting working patterns so that women can
combine work with their responsibilities. To achieve fulfillment and success at home and
work, leisure and personal time must complement one’s job passion and work and
responsibilities, and reducing work family conflict and increasing work family enhancement.
Eliminating pressure is not solution to avoiding stress. We need to manage pressure. Yoga has
now become a popular technique for stress management. Yoga and meditation are being used
as effective methods of stress relief (Woolfolk and Lehrer, 1984). The ancient Indian Science
of Yoga holds the key to combat this modern menace (Nagendra and Nagarathna, (1988).
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(Pragadeeswaran and Panchanatham, 2006) also found that Yoga and meditation practice
develops the executives both emotional stability and stress management. (Mukhopadhyay,
1999) also explained that one of the most powerful and well establish way of competing the
effect of stress is regular. Women employees are working worrying about personal problems
at office space and thinking about profession – related problems at home.

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