Working Women

Working women here are referred to those who are in paid employment.

With centuries the women has been rated as less important than men in almost all parts of the world. In fact, in some ways women’s responsibilities are to look after household and children. Women are discouraged from pursuing higher education or religious pursuits because women who engage in such pursuits might neglect their primary duties as wives and mothers.

Problems:

It is an open truth that working women have to face problems just by virtue of their being women. Social attitude considers women fit for certain jobs like nurses, doctors, teachers the caring and nurturing sectors, secretaries or in assembling jobs-the routine submissive sectors. The age old belief of male superiority over women creates several hurdles for women at their place of work. A gender partiality creates an obstruction at the recruitment stage itself. The inbuilt conviction that women are capable of less work than men or less efficient than men governs this injustice of unequal salaries and wages for the same job. Women on the way up the corporate ladder discover that male colleagues and subordinates often expect much greater expertise and efficiency from a woman boss than from a male boss. Conditioned by social and psychological tradition women colleagues too don’t lend support to their own gender. Working in such conditions unavoidably put much greater strain on women than what men experience. These problems tend to make women less eager to progress in their careers. Indeed many of them choose less demanding jobs for which they may even be over-qualified. A woman’s work is not merely restricted to paid employment.

Women going to work are often subject to sexual harassment. The psychological pressure of all this can easily lead to a woman quitting her job. 

Nearly three fourth working women in cities fail to secure a daily sleeping time of eight hours during a week, and insomnia among women has become a common disease in cities, according to survey results.

She has to (almost always) shoulder the burden of household chores as well. A woman could still bear up with these problems if she had control over the money she earns. But in most families even now her salary is handed over to father, husband or in-laws. So the basic motive for seeking employment of getting independence is nullified in many women’s case. Problems of gender bias beset women in the industrial sector.

Solution:

Most of the problems that beset working women are in reality rooted in the social perspective of the position of women. A fundamental change is required in the attitudes of the employers, policy makers, family members and other relatives and the public at large.