A woman born as a girl child becomes someone’s wife after marriage and finally become the mother of her child. For most of the women covering such phases in life, they have to struggle a lot. There could be several challenges for her from our society. The economic challenge is also there in countries like India. Women are the backbone of our society. They have a major contribution to the economic development of our country. For working women, the challenge is more difficult than men, as they need to balance their work and family responsibilities at the same time. In our society, it’s common to see many times women are suffering from issues like gender bias, unequal pay, both mental and physical harassment. Constantly facing such problems can sometimes break their emotional balance and they might suffer from loneliness, depression, anxiety etc.
What types of emotional challenges do women generally face while working?
In India, women are quite capable of taking care of their household jobs and earn for the family. But while maintaining them they frequently face several challenges from the family, working place or society. Constantly facing such challenges could create several emotional disorders. Let’s have a look at what types of challenges that working women generally face –
Gender Biases – This is very common for women from an early stage of life. In our men dominant society women do not get much importance for their contributions. In some organizations potential and capabilities of women employees have always been underestimated regarding recruitments, salary packages or even promotion. Still, in many Indian families, they utilize the working capacity of a woman and even their entire salary for the household, but still, no one recognizes her contribution. Therefore women never feel independent and have to depend on someone still after earning for the family.
Difficulty in maintaining work-life balance – A working woman is equally responsible for her family and office. She has to fulfil all the requirements of her household and family members, at the same time needs to perform the work responsibilities she has been given in the office. Maintaining the right balance in all such areas sometimes gets too difficult for her. In India career of women is still considered secondary, and most of the families do not offer them adequate mental support. Women in many cases, therefore, lack emotional wellbeing and happiness in life. Sometimes they even suffer from several emotional issues like stress, depression or anxiety.
Managing work pressure and satisfying family members at the same time is a big hurdle for maximum working women. In such a situation, they need emotional support, but unfortunately, they don’t get that sometimes. From here they start getting frustrated and feel helpless sometimes. Many organizations, now conduct employee happiness programs and that can work great for such working women who need emotional support. Happiness programs designed for the employees can work below ways –
Less support in working places – Still in many companies working women get fewer privileges than their male colleagues. Whether it is for the monthly salary packages or promotions many cases women have to suffer a lot. Women in most of the cases work great and take lots of targets to achieve but sometimes have to compromise with less compensation, inadequate maternity and other leaves. Such a situation can lead them to experience insomnia and depression and they start thinking to leave their job.
From most of our families, working environments and societies women lack getting right emotional support where nobody cares about their career dream. Many people still don’t understand the value of women in developing our social and economic development.
Pandemic and its effect on the emotional wellbeing of women
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has ruined the overall healthcare system and majorly impacted the overall economic growth of the world. India has already faced 2 waves of the pandemic, where the 2nd one had a severe impact on the country. Many people have already lost their jobs and women in India had suffered a lot! Between March and April 2020 15.4 million women have lost their jobs, which is 37% of the female workforce versus 28% for men. The overall decline in the job market severely affected the emotional well-being of women in India.
What’s the solution? How women could maintain their work-life balance?
Maintaining a work-life balance starts with emotional wellness. We must appreciate the great contribution of all working women around us and provide them all the emotional support they need to leave a healthy emotional life. Educating people for the betterment of women emotional health is very important. We all should learn the possible ways to accept the fact that men and women both are equally important to make a healthy society, and all women are the backbone of our society to now way their contributions and career dreams can be ignored.
Any woman who wants to check her emotional strength and weakness can try HappiLIFE Screening. It’s a wonderful tool developed by HappiMynd to reveal all your emotional factors and qualities that can make changes in your professional career.
HappiBUDDY can be another great digitally empowered tool from HappiMynd for all the working women who need emotional support and a helping hand who can listen to them. The tool allows you to write your message anonymously and someone from the team of HappiMynd will get back to you soon with all the right emotional supports that you need.