Effects of Pandemic: Personal and Professional Challenges for Working Women
Keywords:
working women, Covid-19., work from home, personal and professional challengesAbstract
Purpose of the study: The paper explores the pertinent challenges faced by working women on personal and professional domains under the lockdown implemented during Covid-19 pandemic. It identifies the sources of stress which have pressurized women under multiple responsibilities while staying at home.
Methodology: A structured questionnaire with a 5-point Likert scale is used to collect data online from 271 employed women working from home. Data analysis is done through SPSS version 20. Descriptive statistics explore the demographic profile of the respondents whereas Cronbach’s alpha and factor analysis measure reliability and identify significant factors of challenges respectively.
Findings: A seven factors structure is derived which provides prolific quantitative and qualitative information centralizing around the theme.
Implications: The article is helpful for organizations and HR practitioners to design policies which enhance their work life balance among their employees as well as to understand the cluster of problems women have while trying to balance their multiple roles
Limitations and Future direction: There is a potential for a future study through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) conducted on independent samples to establish the stability of the factor structure. Moreover, a comparative study can be done to understand challenges across different sectors, or a gender-wise comparison can be made.
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