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DUAL ROLE OF WORKING WOMEN
The term ‘role’ expresses various expectations and obligations which are connected with a specific status in a group or society. The performance expected from an individual in a particular given situation is called 'role'. The concept of role defines a performance of behaviour in different situations. Thus, behaviour is associated with expectations, held by other people in different situations along with individual's interpretation of those expectations.

The behaviour is transaction form of a role. Every person has different position or designation, which insist him to behave and perform accordingly. Such roles are formally designed and created by the employer in each organization. Roles can be classified into three main categories: (a) Expected role (b) Perceived role and (c) Actual role.


 * 1) a)  Expected Role can be defined as “The expectations from an individual by others.”
 * 2) b)  The Perceived role is something like “how an individual thinks that he must present himself or behave to meet the demand of an expected role”.
 * 3) c)  The Actual role can be understood as “the way as an individual actually behaves at his workplace.

Therefore at present time, most of the persons play several roles simultaneously at a same time.

The occupational status of women has been deeply connected with their family and home. As a working woman in different professions, they are playing dual role as a career woman and housewife at the same time. There is always a huge struggle between their society approved status as housewife and mother on one hand, and their status as the productive worker on the other hand. Responsibilities and duties towards family have imposed few restrictions on her at the workplace. Most of the working women are playing a major role as a spouse and a mother, cause of early marriage scenario in our country. When she works at workplace, her home always revolves around in her mind. She struggles with the dilemma of conflicting dual role responsibilities. She has different personalities and also acts differently as a member of an institution or family. Her priorities, interests, loyalties and goals are different at home and workplace.

PROBLEMS ARISING FROM DUAL ROLE
Now a day, working women are very ambitious towards their career. They are performing above the standard. Thus, they give their most of the time to their organization. They experience the problem of role conflict, which arises more when they ignore their household duties and responsibilities due to giving priority to their career. The dual role of women employees has made their life more difficult as well as challenging. Work-life balance is becoming a major issue to maintain their personal and professional life well. This is the reason why most of the organizations are expected to increase the morale and motivation of their faculty to get better productivity and performance from them. The challenges, which affect most to the work-life balance of women faculty, are given below:

WORK RELATED PROBLEMS-
Following are the major issues which are directly associated with the sources of stress at workplace.

  Time management- This is amongst the major sources of stress, which is experienced by almost every person, whether he/she is working or not. Time management is nothing more than to do right thing at the right time. As women always complain to have role conflict, this is must for them to manage their duties and responsibilities at home and workplace which is possible only through following a perfect time management strategy. Thus, managing their time between both lives is becoming the most prominent issue amongst them.

  Work overload: Usually, women are expected to do multiple tasks at the same time. Somehow this is a natural phenomenon that women can do various task at a same time while men cannot perform like this. Therefore, to accomplish everything on time, she must not only manage her time but also have a great flexibility. She is always expected to be available every time for every task but sometimes this situation creates a big dilemma for her.

 High expectations from working women: Working women always face challenge towards the fulfilment of dual role. As a mother and a wife, she is always expected to perform the traditional ideal role with self-effacing and sacrificing nature on the interest of her family’s happiness. While at her workplace, she must be a performer with the qualities of decision making, innovative, leadership and competitive spirit. To have the qualities of cooperative and sacrificing attitude at home and competitive spirit at workplace creates a big challenge and high expectations from her.

 Problem of adverse self evaluation: When a working woman could not be able to fulfil the responsibilities towards a mother’s role and a wife’s role, she blames herself for being the failure. She thinks herself to be accountable only for the study of her children, marks,unsocial behaviour and so many other daily routine activities. As a result, dual role conflict becomes a reason of her de-motivation. Unfavourable working environment, unsupportive supervision, long working hours etc. are the common reasons which a working woman experiences during fulfilment of dual role responsibilities.

FAMILY RELATED PROBLEMS-
As we know, India is a country, where many cultures exist so each working woman has a different culture and background. Family traditions can be different from woman to woman. They suffer from many family related problems which affect their works are as follows:

  Maintenance of strong relationship with family members: This is another major issue for a working woman. As maximum women are engaged with different jobs, they are devoting less time towards family and this is creating dissatisfaction among family members with respect to her. To satisfy family members such as spouse, children and in-laws and maintain a healthy relation with all is also a major challenge arising due to dual role.

  Role conflict to fulfil traditions: Indian culture has variety of a sub cultures itself. The entire women faculty belongs from different caste and religion, along with having their own. But this situation converts into stress when they did not get a holiday. Thus, it becomes very difficult for a working woman to attend the workplace and celebrating the festival at home on the same day.

 The problem to connect with society: Sometimes, workload and long working hour create stress amongst them when they could not attend the social events in society, due to excess work pressure. This problem creates a gap to make a balance between work and home to fulfil dual role responsibilities.

In addition, many factors exist to complicate the puzzle of performing multi task or dual roles. Even not every working woman wants to be a career woman, she is enforced to do so to earn and become supplement for the family income. She performs more than her energy to meet the need and pressure of her family, job and herself. As a result, she suffers mentally and physically both. Many survey results show that married working women suffer from greater health risk as compared to men, because of their dual roles at home and workplace.

Due to overload, woman’s aspirations also shatter when she feels guilty of neglecting her family. Sometimes, her sincerity towards her duties becomes a cause of her stress. Because she always lives in tension towards her responsibilities and this sincerity of her is not appreciated at her home and workplace. She does not have freedom of her movement towards her recreation or rejuvenation. A working woman spends almost thirty-six to fifty hours in a week at workplace, along a major portion of time at home, without any domestic help hired or otherwise. Usually, most of the men think that domestic work is a part of a woman’s duty and they do not have anything to do in this matter.

Along with this, family members expect from her to be the performer and efficient at job, smart, graceful and beautiful at home and in social events, just like Alladin's Genie to be perfectly able to cook, cleaning, designing and stitching dresses and delight their guests by giving them five-star treatments. Working mother has to meet the expectations and obligations arising from dual role conflicts. It does not matter whether she is living in nuclear or joint family. This dual role burden creates another role related problems such as role conflict and role ambiguity.

The consequences of role overload, role ambiguity and role conflict may have following effects:

  An individual may suffer from physical and psychological problems. The physical effects include: Tiredness, Back pain, Sickness, Headache and other physical problems while psychological effects show Frustration, Anxiety, Tension, Anger, depression and so on.

  Role conflicts create problems at the workplace in terms of absenteeism, low performance, lots of grievances, low morale etc.

Career-oriented women take too much responsibility for parenting, maintaining a job and managing the home at the same time. A woman, who is working, carries 75 percent of the household responsibilities on herself. Time and energy also get imbalanced when woman continuously tries to play multiple roles at home and workplace at the same time. "Since women are increasing their relative commitment to work outside the home, thereby changing their balance of commitments, the issue of the effects of multiple roles is salient."

Women are spending their time and efforts overwhelmingly on their career, home, children, husband and such other things. A woman can achieve her goals only when she is mentally prepared for role conflicts to be a career woman and has the potential to develop strategies for coping with them. Women have also experienced over pressure from their employers who are expected to give preference to their professional life instead of personal one.

Emerging 21st century, a woman wants to have it all- a happy family, personal life, high ambitious career and higher education. It is really just a balancing act just like an acrobat who walks on tight rope. Women of 21st century are highly educated and occupying high designations at their workplaces. Therefore, this is a dilemma for them to balance their career and personal life together.

Integrating her family and work is a great balancing act for a working woman. A professional/ managerial woman gives preference to her career more than her family, while few women give priority to their family and job is nothing more than a money earning source for them. But this is true that ambitions can be different for each woman but the level of stress is almost equal among them. Roles can be different, but role conflict exists here for sure. Therefore, they should work upon learning the art to manage the stress, instead of complaining about it.

WOMEN WORKING IN EDUCATION SECTOR

 * Indian constitution in its ‘Fundamental Rights’ has a provision for equality, social justice and protection of women. With effective education and slowly evolving new perceptions about women and their social statuses, Indian women have secured legal and political equality, entered prestigious professions and occupied positions of power. The new vision of development involving women must ensure general participation in the definition and actual provisions of the basic needs of all citizens, regardless of their race, creed, gender and age. Women’s education in India provides access for girls to higher education, which was earlier denied to them due to parental reservations rising out of conservativeness, social customs and other prejudices. The contribution of women to the country’s development cannot be undermined. Women who constitute half of India’s population play different roles as homemaker, workers, teachers, professionals, managers, executives, entrepreneurs, politicians and so on.

ROLE OF WORKING WOMEN IN TEACHING PROFESSION

 * There is a paradigm shift in the role and responsibilities of modern working women like faculty. For remaining at the central stage of the multi-dimensional teaching- learning process, a teacher has to redefine her role, has to undergo rigorous changes, and has to update her knowledge, to have basic human values, to have accountability to the society and to students. Only such a teacher can work for the formation of right habits, thoughts, actions, cultivation of values and the development of right behaviour patterns in children. Teaching is now becoming a challenging profession which requires clear objectives, good subject knowledge, perfect time management, excellent questioning skills, art of classroom organisation, effective planning, proper interaction, effective use of human resources, attitudes towards teaching, effective communication skills and area of interests etc. That is why Moore (2001) defined teaching, "as the actions of someone who is trying to assist others to reach their fullest potential in all aspects of development. The role of teacher has changed entirely in response to new patterns of educational governance and managements, new kinds of students, new theories of teaching and learning, and arising of new technologies. Even though innovations and reforms occur, a teacher is still in the pivotal position of the classroom interaction and teaching learning process. In the learner-cantered, process-oriented, competency- based, environmental-attached, human based instructional situation, a teacher has to face multi-level problems like planning of the content, selection of appropriate teaching-learning strategies and situations, creation of motivation among multi grade- multi level students, usage of group dynamics, completion of curricular objectives, its linkage with practical life, adaptations in curricular statements from the deviated students, timing, continuous and comprehensive evaluation, classroom management, linkage with society and parents, good relationship with local bodies and their planning processes etc.

Hence. the role of a faculty has changed as a planner, manager, designer, director, facilitator, researcher, psychologist, philosopher, sociologist, artist, friend, guide, actor, well-wisher etc. Technological developments, knowledge explosions, familial problems, social issues, behavioural problems are other challenges that make a teacher's role more complex.

In this era of rapid changes in the field of science and technology, communication and interaction, life styles of human being, societal viewpoints, cultural thoughts, educational expansions, a teacher has to perform a diversified role to cope up with them. It is theorized that the stress in teaching professionals is caused by certain antecedent factors such as personal, family and situational factors. These factors related with the teaching profession cause various effects of stress in women faculty members which lead to three outcomes of stress, namely physiological effects, psychological effects and behavioural effects. It is further proposed that the teaching professionals at education institutes experience stress arising out of their performance of various roles in executing teaching activities and responsibilities which influence their level of job satisfaction.

The role of women as teachers is more appreciable in our country and that too in our state. Women come out to work for personal satisfaction, self–expression, financial security, sharing of responsibility, economic necessity, independence and so on. It provides them an opportunity to lead a comfortable and satisfactory life. Due to the expansion of women’s education, there will be a high demand for number of women faculty. Teachers are the main functionaries of the educational system. Women faculty have an important role in preparing the students in higher education for their life and career. Teaching is the noblest profession because every teacher functions as a ladder for his/her pupils to go up in life. Teachers are the real nation builders and function as a pivot on which the entire nation revolves. They spread the light of knowledge all over as a candle does. They must get the confidence of the students. In order to be inspired teachers and role models, teachers should be knowledgeable, skill based and possessing the right and positive attitudes towards their profession.

The teacher is placed in such a high position because the life an individual is leased on the education he gets. H.G. Wells says, “Teacher is the real maker of society”. Teacher is the soul of any educational institution i.e. school, college or university. The teacher herself is the key to the success or failure of any education system. The efficiency of education system rests upon the quality of a teacher.

Without good teachers, even the best of the system is bound to fail. With good teachers, even the defects of a system can be largely overcome. Thus, a teacher is so important in the entire educational system and they are the nation builders and creators of new society. When women occupy such glorious teaching profession, it adds and adorns much better to the profession than men. Women are hard workers than men. The attitude, perception and expectations of women faculty are highly different from that of men faculty. Women faculty play the dual role as teachers and home makers/home managers. They have to find a balance between work and life and maintain quality work life. In this venture, they do have problems and untill their problems are identified and remedial measure sought out, the prosperity of the Nation will remain as a dream, as the various types of problems faced by them will seriously affect the quality output of students of human resources.

STRESS AMONG WORKING WOMEN IN EDUCATION SECTOR
It is an undoubted fact that status of women has risen up compared to past few years. But it is also a reality that woman is not completely independent yet. Every day, she experiences many problems, especially if she is a working woman. In present world, professional women in the education sector are increasingly confronted with a problem of conflict between a career role and opting for an equally demanding role at home. There are stresses associated with both alternatives and with choosing to balance between them.

Stress is inevitable in human life. Working women face stress at their workplace. The women faculty experience various effects of stress and the extent of stress varies due to many causative factors.

In order to procure a deeper and meaningful understanding of effects of stress in professionals’ teaching, an attempt was made to identify various possible variables which have their contribution towards it. The available literature and related researches on stress guided the investigator to organize the selected variables into causative relationship.

The components of framework are Antecedent factors

1. Individual factors

 Gender differences

 Personal factors

 Family factors

2. Job related factors

 Role stressors

 Job satisfaction

 Situational factors

 Service duration

In India, stress is a common problem among teachers in higher education system. They may face tension, anxiety, fear, pressure, strain and stress in their day to day life to be able to contribute effectively in the field of education. A few other factors such as job insecurity, increasing overload, accountability without adequate authority, inadequate facilities and lack of recognition may also contribute to stress in these teachers.

Further, women teaching professionals might also be subjected to face common stressors viz; dissatisfactory working conditions, excess workload, long working hour, poor relationship with peers/colleagues and lack of required resources. Insufficient money as salary and lack of respect in society ultimately lowers down the psychological well-being of working women. It affects the teaching competencies on one side and develops “stress” on the other.

Most of the working women faculty spend from twelve to twenty hours in class each week with their schedules changing in each semester. Working hours, faculty meetings, advising and class preparation, account for thirty to forty additional hours per week. The academic year generally runs in India from June/July to April. The teachers use summer months for research or other jobs such as summer placement of students guiding project work and undergoing faculty advancement schemes. They also have to maintain an excellent liaison with industries in corporate sector which facilitates easy internship and job placement for students. Due to these varied duties and responsibilities, women faculty members are under considerable pressure throughout the year.

The conceptual structure in Figure 1 shows two different variables i.e. personal and situational variables, which influence the role of working women as a teacher at home and workplace. Multiple roles may convert into role strain and role conflict. Figure 1 clearly showed that role conflict, role strain and role overload can increase challenges, problems, issues, or concerns as working women deal with their multiple roles. Women as faculty may confront by using different strategies and support system to fight against stress, arises from role conflict.