Dual Role Of Working Mothers In India: A Critical Analysis Of Physical And Mental Health

Abstract

Working mothers face the dual responsibility of managing home and the workplace, meeting and balancing the responsibilities become quite challenging for them. In present scenario, women are working to share the financial load, which was earlier with the male counterparts, but the male counterparts have not added equally to the household chores. In order to balance and manage both the roles, the well-being of working mothers is mostly ignored. Thus, the study focuses on the mental and physical health of working mothers in present scenario.

Materials and Methods: Structured questionnaire was framed to meet the objectives of the study. Out of 200 working mothers approached, 168 responses were collected from working mothers, who are employed in private, government, semi-government organizations. Secondary sources were also used to understand the gap and various perspective of the study.

Result: 59% of the study is conducted in the age group of 31-40 years, 29% from the age group of 41-50. Around 64.1% of the working women were employed in private organizations, 17.9% were part of government organization. 2.6% had semi-government jobs and remaining were part of other miscellaneous jobs. Some of the questions in the questionnaire depicting the physical health, reveals that more than 50% of the working mothers most often feel low on energy, they don’t get proper sleep, 42% of the working mothers most often feel some health issues after childbirth, which creates more anxiety, stress, frustration. 42% of the working mothers are depressed, 44% of them face physical problems of body ache, headache, they also lose their temper most often, which depicts that they are unable to take care of their mental and physical health and also unable to find time for exercise and regular counsel from doctors.

Conclusion: Building a conducive environment at workplace and at home is very valuable. Support from colleagues, friends and family members plays a vital role. The strategies of work from home, flexi time, childcare facilities can help maintain the work life balance for working mothers. The society needs to develop a better and healthy environment for mothers which in turn will create better citizens in the society.