Occupational stress, social and family difficulties and job contentment of working women: Bangladesh perspective

Abstract

It was a practice that women would principally do the household tasks, bringing up families and men would work to impart financial supports to the families. But in course of time due to declining population, education, economic welfare and women liberation movement, that convention has changed gradually. Women now seek out careers for livelihood and earning money as well as for identification, development and self-actualization and self esteem. They do not focus on just supplementing the earnings of their family but also feel like to make a fuller use of their talents and skills to secure for themselves and their family members the best of nourishment, education and cultural life. However, although the recent practice of women working bring financial independence, it also exalts difficulties and stresses to the working women’s lives in terms of various elements of the job situation such as lack of job security, social protection, interpersonal relations at work, responsibility conflict and uncertainty, lack of autonomy and participation at work, organizational arrangement and atmosphere, career prospects, work and family balances issues, disproportionate work load, health and safety risks, low wage etc. The present study contains the information and situation on working women, the hazards and occupational strains they face at work and in family life in many developed and developing countries including Bangladesh. Besides, this study has also tried to illustrate where the difficulties are and how far these for working women can be solved by giving them emotional sustenance, voicing against the long standing harassment of women and advocating equality for them.