Job Stress in Working Women-Indian Perspective

Job stress is a phenomenon of modern lifestyle. Everyone is under stress- men and women. It was found that a lot of women talk about stress & its effects. However, lot of research needs to be conducted on the factors in Indian context to determine how these might impact the women employees' performance due to the comprehensive economic changes along with the change in the social and demographic structure of the society and family. This paper focuses on the stress in working women in India in information technology sector. The Indian IT-BPO industry has emerged as the largest private sector employer in the country. Based on the research of around 300 women working women in Delhi-National capital region, six variables have been identified which were assumed to lead to stress, namely task demands, career growth demands, role demands, female friendly policies, personal life style habits & work family conflict. The research was carried out using both secondary and primary data. Item response theory was used to analyze the data. On an average, women tend to maintain good relations at work but this may sometimes lead to carrying work pressure from office to home. Acceptance of female boss by male subordinates is still not easy. Office politics, harassment, may add on to stress levels. Non availability of flexi hours, pressure to keep oneself updated, performance pressure, fear of losing the job are some of the stressors Also, organizations mostly do not entertain maternity leave requests beyond the statutory ones, which raise concern among female workers, who are mothers too. Many of the times, provision of child care is not available on board, which simply results in stress increment. It was found that women are discriminated against the male counterparts in areas like promotions, selections into the top management levels and networking.