GROUP MEMBERS

Saad Ahmed (092)

M. Usman Inam (077)
Aiza Hussain Rana (008)
Haseeb Ali (035)
Faisal Zafar (029)
BBA-3B

Date
5th Dec, 2007
CHAPTER 1

TOPIC:

“STRESS IN THE LIFE OF WORKING MEN AND WOMEN”

INTRODUCTION:
The topic that we have selected is regarded in introspect with the measure of stress in the
life of working men or woman. The word 'stress' is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as
"a state of affair involving demand on physical or mental energy".

The word stress has been used in many ways by different theorist. We will define stress
as any circumstances that threaten or perceived to threaten one’s well being and that there
by tax one’s coping abilities.

Women are socialized to be the caretakers of others. More women then men have a career
outside the home and continue to try to juggle traditional responsibilities after hours. A
par of the married women with children under the age of 20 is employed outside the
home. Sociologists describe women as struggling to achieve the "male standard" at work,
while trying to maintain the perfect wife and mother standards at home.

Besides men are also busy in there work. In our country majority of the employed people
are men but that not means that women are excluded from the job. Both passes through
the same work and have different problems. Stress affects in different way on men and
women

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:

We want to study the various aspects that results in the form of stress in the life of
working men and women. And also what are the causes and reasons that women get high
stress than men.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY:

We want to eliminate the differences that world thinks that world thinks that affect of
stress in same on working men and women. Women and men have same intellectual
abilities but both absorb stress in different ways.

We want to finally state that working (job) women have greater tendency of experiencing
stress than men. Also to find out the biological differences between men and women that
affects stress. And also to find out results and causes that increases the affect of stress in
women than men.

2
OBJECTIVES

 We have to find that whether men or women experience greater stress in work.

 Reasons and situations that increases the stress on working women than men

 Who can efficiently handle the stress i.e. men or women?

3
CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

http:\\1 Women, in these days, have a lot of balancing to do between home and
workplace, including balancing between social and personal requirements. The issues of
maternity, menopause, parenthood, gender roles, conditions at home and workplace,
familial and social support et al, often blight women's lives in the long run.

Now a days women faces lots of stress in the home

and the workplace. At home they have different
role and responsibilities and at organization they
have different roles. Where a women starts
working outside she bears dual responsibility that
requires double labor. Now dual role responsibility
may generate irritation, frustration, anxiety,
depression etc. this is a time when more care
is needed by self and by the family members also.

Glenn E. Good2 says that much of the causes of male depression and stress, arises from
their self nurtured identities, especially related to their professional status. "If you ask a
man who he is, the first thing he says is his work—I'm an executive, I'm a doctor, I'm a
housebuilder," says Glenn E. Good, an associate professor of educational and counseling
psychology at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

In the above paragraph, much stress of men is related to their professional status. For
example a person is a business man and he loss any contract he will go in to deep stress
because men are closely associated with profession. And his profession is every thing for
him. For example workplace stress can have extreme consequences. In Japan, work stress
related suicide rate among men has risen over the last 15 years. According to the
Government's Statistics Bureau, the highest suicide rate occurs in men from 35 to 44
years old, making it the 13th most common cause of death for men. Newspapers carried
the triple suicide story in March 1998, when three Japanese men—all heads of car part
companies—took their lives on the same night. The reason they gave is—Poor Company
Finances!

1
http://www.lifepositive.com/Mind/psychology/stress/male-depression.asp#top
2
http://www.lifepositive.com/Mind/psychology/stress/male-depression.asp#top

4
3
Http:\\ A study at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) published in the
July 2000 issue of Psychological Review offers clues to the biological and behavioral
differences in the ways men and women cope with stress. The study found that females of
many species, including humans, respond to stressful situations by seeking social contact
and support from others, particularly females.

In the above view, men and women have different biological and behavioral differences
so they both deal with stress in their own way . for example men have different behavior
to deal with different situations. Like in critical situation men behave patiently and
calmly and women gets nervous. Females were more likely to deal with stress by
"tending and befriending" -- that is, contacting those around them and reaching out to
others. distress; befriending is the creation and maintenance of social networks that may
aid in this process

Do Women Have More Stress than Men?

4
Psychologist Alice Domar in Boston agrees that data clearly show that women are more
stressed day to day than men, and it’s not, as was once thought, because they ruminate
more.

“Men worry about three things: their immediate family, their job and money,” she says.
“Women worry on a daily basis about up to 12 things – their immediate family, their job,
money, their extended family, their friends, their kids’ friends, the way the house looks,
their weight, the dog, etc.”

From the above paragraph we conclude that men have less stress in their life’s then
women. They worry about the family that whether everyone in the family is fine , their
job that whether they are performing their responsibilities well and finally about money
that whether they enough money to satisfy their own and family needs. As compared to
men women take much more stress. They worry about little things happening around
them. For example they take much more stress about the family , they worry about the
kids about their home whether it is looking good or not. They worry about themselves
about their health and weight.

Occupational stress has become a common problem in the United States. National
surveys throughout the 1990s have indicated that 26% to 40% or more of workers report
high levels of stress in the workplace.3-8 .Occupational stress may be a particular
problem for women. In national surveys, more employed women than men have reported
high levels of stress and stress-related illnesses,5,7 and 60% of the women respondents
in one survey reported that job stress was their number-one problem. Job stressors

3
http://www.swedish.org/17043.cfm
4
By: Judy Foreman
http://www.myhealthsense.com/F020813_womenStress.html

5
commonly include job/ task demands (work overload, lack of task control),
organizational factors (poor interpersonal relations, unfair management practices,
discriminatory hiring practices), and physical conditions.(noise).10 Additional sources of
stress include financial and economic factors, conflict between work and family roles,
sex-specific stressors (sexual harassment), training and career development issues,
and poor organizational climate (values,communication styles, etc).

This study shows that women have more occupational stress than men. This stress is due
to job. Because when a women starts working outside she bears dual responsibility that
requires double labor. In this situation if she cannot discharge her duties equally and
efficiently, she feels tense and continuous tension creates stress, that in-turn may affect
her mental health status. With growing age, problems may also grow. Job stress may
include over work, lack of doing any duty, poor relations with other employees in the
workplace. They all affect them which in turn affect their health and mental process.

Research Evidence
5
One of the most frequently used models for studying the effects of job stress on worker
health is the job strain model. It characterizes jobs with low levels of job control (or
decision latitude) and high workload demands as high strain and predicts that these types
of jobs will be most likely to produce symptoms and illness. Later versions of the model
have incorporated measures of supervisory and co-worker support, predicting that high
levels of support can reduce the adverse effects of job strain. Most of the early job strain
studies were conducted on populations of working men. More recently, however, studies
have examined the job strain model in populations of women and found health effects
associated with high-strain jobs. High-strain jobs have been linked with psychological
distress, pain, and reduced physical functioning; increased sickness absenteeism and
depressive symptoms among female workers in a wide variety of occupations; significant
increases in blood pressure among more highly educated female white-collar workers.

Combining Work and Family.

Seventy percent of mothers with children under the age of 18 were working in 1996.
Today, the employment curve for women tracks that of men, with the highest labor force
participation rates during the prime working years of 25 to 54. Working women still
retain primary responsibility for dependent care and household. Women are more likely
than men to report taking time from work to address their children’s needs (83% v 22%),
and are more likely to have elder care responsibilities. Although fathers are spending
more time with their children and on household chores than they did 20 years ago, the
gender gap is still significant. Additionally, some research has indicated that women who
5
By NAOMI G. SWANSON, PHD
JAMWA Vol.55, No.2
http:\ www.google.com/stress in women

6
occupy multiple roles mother, worker, spouse) experience better mental and physical
health than women who occupy few roles, perhaps because with multiple roles, the
stresses one role may be offset by the rewards another., When women lack sufficient
child care and household help from spouses and work in psychologically demanding jobs,
their health and well-being may suffer.

The above study shows that women are more involved in labor force along with the men.
Working women inspite of their tuff routine might take a time to take care of their house
and family. And also percentage of men taking care of children has increased over the
last 20 years. Women who occupy several responsibilities may have less stress as
compared to women who have few responsibilities because they might forget the stress of
one responsibility by getting reward in other responsibility. For example women not
doing well in work place but she is fulfilling all her responsibilities in the home might be
satisfied and forget the stress of her work place. But it is not easy because One’s ability to
handle various roles has its limits. Also when a women get married their responsibilities
become double because marriage itself a stressful experience for wives and mothers.
Marriage is a commitment with love and responsibility for peace, happiness and
development of strong family relationships.

7
CHARTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLY:

We have done a comprehensive and detailed study of you topic “stress in the life of
working men and women”. For help, we carried to out various research techniques
which are related to our topic. For the research purpose we have used various
methodologies of research which are mentioned below:-
• Questionnaires
• Interview
• Group discussions
• Discussion with the people who were interviewed and provided questionnaires

QUESTIONNAIRE:

We distributed questionnaires which contains a series of selected questions about stress

of working men and women amongst a selected group of people. We selected the people
who are associated to their profession or job whom we thought were the easiest
accessible ones to us. The questionnaire somewhat provide us a result about our topic
“Stress in life of working men and women”. According to the questionnaires 78% of
the people are of view that women experience more stress than men at work. They also
says that women should be provided some extra facilities at work then men. Besides 22%
are of view that men experience more stress because they have to run the home and have
other responsibilities like protect their family members.

GROUP DISCUSSION:

For the research purpose we carried a comprehensive group discussion regarding the
issue. All members of our group actively participated in the discussion of who will suffer
from greater stress i.e. men or women at working but we could not reached a tangible
conclusion. Some members concluded that women faces more stress in life then men
because women are not provided with the proper facilities at the workplace and also that
some other issues i.e. culture and tradition do not allow women to work and as a result
she experience more stress then men. Some have concluded that men face more stress as
they are supposed to run the entire cycle of life.

8
CHAPTER 4

FEEDBACK FROM DIFFERENT PEOPLE RAGARDING STRESS

After all the interviews taken from professionals, teachers and other people we concluded
a result that stress is a chemical process which occurs when some body feels tension or
difficulty. When a person feel tension excess of chemical reactions start taking place in
person’s mind which results into stress.

Women and men have different level of stress in different period of time. What so ever
the difficult situation is women feel more stress than men. The tendency to overcome the
stress is different in men and women but we observed that women have more ability to
overcome stress.

During our research we observe that stress always have negative effect on a person’s
mental and physical health. Major symptoms showed by people having stress are
personality change, negative change in attitude, people victim of stress show negative and
rude response on almost every thing. Lack of hunger is also a major effect of stress.

We also approached on few methods that can reduce the effects of stress i.e. according to
our teacher Madam Shakeela, person should enjoy every problem he should not take
that problem such that it become burden for him. Also change in environment, keeping
environment friendly, remaining and attaching with group and family can reduce stress.
Emotional support from parents and other close relatives can also demolish effects of
stress especially for women this can be more effective.

We also observed that people facing stress starts using drugs to stay calm. Smoking is
perceived as a most reliable source of reduction of stress because it contains nicotine
which fastens the speed of blood.

People who are in stress for a long time they may approach at a stage where no
medication, treatment or experiment can bring them back to normal level. To avoid this
person suffering from stress needs the help of his relatives, change in environment.

At the end we approach at the conclusion that women have more stress than men. Both
have different capacity to deal with stress. Stress is the problem which can not be
ignored. People facing stress must do some thing right to reduce stress as much as they
can

9
CONCLUSION:
The study was conducted to explore the problems and stress of working men and women
at work and home. The present study aimed at explaining the relationship between stress
in working men and women and it is also an attempt to provide a preventive and positive
approach to working women experiencing more stress at work than men.

This study is comparative analysis of

“Stress and its relation to work among men and women in terms of work at job”

The research hypothesis was that

“The tendency of experiencing stress in greater among working women as

compared to working women”

We may conclude that one of the biggest reasons of women facing more stress is dual
responsibilities which they have to perform at home and the workplace which led to
shortage of time and result in stress. It may also include married women because after
marriage their psychological environment changes due difference in family cultures,
places and behavior among the family members.

It may also be concluded that married women faces more stress as compared to
unmarried women. Our findings indicate that married working women have to face more
difficulties in their lives and have more stress because they cannot give proper attention
to their families as well as to their self also which causes stress. So in this way hypothesis
is proved that women faces more stress then men.

In short women should be provided more facilities or equally

treated with men so that she could gave time to her family and
hence reduce stress.

10
 SAMPLE OF QUESTIONNAIRE

1. What is your idea about stress?

2. Do you think that there us more stress in working women than men?

3. How stress affect the mental and physical health of a person?

4. Do you think that men and women have different abilities to deal with stress?

5. How one can handle stress in critical situation?

6. Does stress only negative effects?

7. What factors cause increase in stress?

8. Do you think that women should be provided more facilities at work than men?

11
Table Of Contents

12