I. J. of Business & Management Research
Research Article | 
Indian Women at Workplace: Coping with “Role boundedness” through “Hardiness”
Author(s) : Dr. Pallabi Mund
Publisher : FOREX Publication
Published : 30 June 2021
e-ISSN : 2347-4696
Page(s) : 201-206
Abstract
Stress has become a matter of concern in the present post-globalization world which has brought in enormous changes in the ways organizations work, the professionals’ work-style and pattern, extended working hours, meeting deadlines, added roles and responsibilities, role overload and ambiguities; and cultural and technological changes. Researchers have demonstrated a gender variation with respect to coping with role stressors or stressful life events. Golpelwar [1] finds that Indian women professionals suffer from a role stress typically termed as “Role boundedness”, a result of wanting “to be everything for everybody”. The present descriptive research work, probably one of the first on the issue, highlights the importance of “hardiness” - a stress resilient personality disposition [2] - in coping with “role boundedness” and shows a relationship between role boundedness and hardiness in women professionals indicative of the protective mechanism of hardiness in coping with role boundedness.
Keywords: Role stress , Role boundedness, Kobasa , Hardiness , Indian women corporate professionals
5. CONCLUSION
The results indicate that the mean is higher for a greater number of stresses like SRD, IRD and RB (except PIn) for female professionals. There is also a significant relationship between RB and gender at p < 0.01, where p = 0.000. This fulfils the first objective of this study where we find that women professionals are more role bounded.
It was also evident that the mean is higher for females for all the dimensions of hardiness in comparison to their male counterparts. The mean of overall hardiness for female professionals is also higher in contrast to male professionals.
We see a significant relationship between gender and hardiness for Commitment, Control as well as for overall hardiness at p < 0.01, p = 0.000. However, there is no significant variance found for Challenge in relation to gender. This fulfils the second objective of the study that females are hardier than their male counterparts.
The regression analysis confirms that role boundedness predicts hardiness among women corporate professionals, thus fulfilling the third objective of the study. These results indicate the importance of hardiness as a protective mechanism in withstanding role boundedness in women corporate professionals, thereby fulfilling the main objective of this study. The findings are in alignment with several studies that support the protective resiliency effect of hardiness in coping with role stressors [13, 32-34].
I would like to mention here that this is perhaps one of the first studies that established a relationship between hardiness, its components and GRS scale (General Role Stressors – SRD, IRD, RB and PI) in Indian women corporate professionals. However, as the above findings are based on a sample which focuses only on selected Indian women corporate professionals, the results cannot be generalized across all samples and occupational groups. Further research can be undertaken to study the effect of hardiness on Indian professionals, focussing on women professionals only, considering the well-defined societal multiple role-play as well as a well-established cultural background they are normally brought up with.
Dr. Pallabi Mund, Assistant Professor of Management, DAV School of Business Management, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India ; Email: pallabimund@gmail.com
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Dr. Pallabi Mund (2021), Indian Women at Workplace: Coping with “Role boundedness” through “Hardiness”. IJBMR 9(2), 200-206. DOI: 10.37391/IJBMR.090211.