Effect of role conflict on psychological well-being of elected women representatives (Sarpanches) in India

Description

Page: 1371-1374

Gurpreet Dandiwal, Sandeep Singh Rana, and Priyanka (Department of Applied Psychology, Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology, Hisar, Haryana)

Psychological well-being affects the overall quality of life of a person that includes happiness, peace of mind and life satisfaction. A positive psychological well-being is related with better emotional health, self-acceptance, occupational health and good inter-personal relationships. Political reservations for women create a ‘potential of presence’ (Agarwal, 2010). Women are strengthening their position in every sphere of life parallel to men, pursuing all leadership position all over the world. The women sarpanch slowly moving towards the leadership scale and changing the face of politics by giving new direction to the empowerment, highlighting their problems and finding solutions to make it successful. The participation of women in election not only make them independent, also provides a chance to women come forward but also affect their well-being, sense of worth, self-confidence, resilience and self esteem unfortunately there are still majority of women sarpanch who are guided by the their male members of her family, and are not in position to exercise their elected power effectively. They experience greater inter role conflict than either men or non-working women. Present study investigates the effect of role conflict on psychological well-being of women sarpanches. It was hypothesized that there is significant effect of role conflict on psychological well-being of elected women representative. For the present study sample of 300 elected women with age range 25 year 70 year and who completed the inclusion criteria for study are selected. Psychological well- being scale (Ryff et al., 1995) Role conflict scale (Pandey, 1999) scales are used for study. The findings of present research shows the negative correlation between role conflict and psychological well-being of elected women representatives(-.246**)