Research - (2021) Volume 10, Issue 10
Received: 21-Oct-2021
Published:
11-Nov-2021
, DOI: 10.37421/2169-026X.2021.10.333
Citation: Priyatosh Mishra. "Women Work from Home during Pandemic Covid -19 Conflict/Convenient." J Entrepren Organiz Manag 10 (2021): 333.
Copyright: © 2021 Priyatosh Mishra. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
A cross sectional study has been conducted among 81 working women to assess their convenience of work from home option during this lockdown period. The questionnaire has been sent through email and whatsapp link. Responses have revealed that 72% of the women feel workplace will be more convenient when compared to home even though there are lot of support from family members and higher officials. This lockdown period has initiated the use of many communication technologies which many were not aware of.
COVID 19 • Working Women • Work Place • Work Satisfaction
World Health organization (WHO) characterizes "Wellbeing is a condition of complete physical, mental and social prosperity and not only the nonattendance of sickness or illness" [1]. Fuller and Hirsh [2] have proved that flexible working time will reduce mother’s problems. They have also mentioned that for different levels of education and wages, the convenient working hours will reduce the women stress.
Sudhinta Sinha [3] has stated that “Employed women are more satisfied with their life than nonworking women, and the quality of home and work environments determines the impact of employment on the psychological well-being of working women in dual-earner families.”
The Pandemic COVID 19 has made the world devastating. Whole world is under lockdown. IT companies, schools, colleges, factories, shopping malls, cinema theatres, park and even beaches are closed. But the need of human never closes. During this deadly pandemic time, people started work from home and many are forced to do so. Women are the most vulnerable group. Other than IT and very few professionals, work from home is a mystery for many women. Even now, the countries like Germany, New Zealand, Belgium, Finland, Iceland and Denmark where the women leaders are fighting Covid 19 effectively, getting adapted to this system, women really need some time. Based on these facts, this study has been formulated to understand the perception and attitude of women towards work from home concept.
The study was conducted among 81 working women. The mean age of the participants is 32.3 ± 6.5. Among the participants, 96.3% were working in private sector. 64% of the women were really worried about their salary and only 21% have previous experience of work from home option. The Zoom Application, which is recently used even for many government official meetings, was known earlier only to 28% of the participants.
Even though, more than 60% of the women were able to understand the higher official’s communication and complete task in the stipulated time, 72% felt that workplace will be more convenient than home and only 5% of the participants reported that they are irritated because of continuous calls and emails. Being aware of symptoms and preventive measures of Covid 19, 84% of the working women are getting their family support and around 64% felt that their children are happy with this set up. The 96.3% of participants have the awareness of Social distancing against Covid 19 Pandemic and the mean number of times washing their hands using soap/hand wash/ sanitizer is 9.02±5.8.
Table 1 explains in detail about the median time spent by women for professional and other activities with Inter quartile range (IQR). It shows that, most of the time is utilized for professional and household activities. Around 47%, nearly half of the participants have reported that they don’t have enough time for recreation.
| Time spent | Median | IQR |
|---|---|---|
| Actual Working hours | 8.0 | 2.3 |
| Professional work | 6.0 | 4.0 |
| Communication with higher officials | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| House hold activities | 4.0 | 3.0 |
| Physical activity | 1.0 | 2.0 |
| To gain knowledge about COVID 19 | 2.0 | 2.0 |
Even though most of the women get family support, clear instructions from higher officials and enough time for completing various activities, the convenient place is workplace for 72% of the participants when compared to home, in completing the professional tasks. This shows that work from home is convenient in many ways, but is being a conflict (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Workplace VS Home in completing professional tasks.
The present study was conducted to have a clear picture of convenience of work from home option for working women during this Covid 19 lockdown period. The biggest challenge for working women is to tackle the expectation of family members especially the spouse and the children. This study reveals that the working environment to do the professional work is very important for most of the women; even they are supported by family members. This lockdown period trains women getting adapted to various work environments with a gain of lot of knowledge about technical applications and technologies.
Entrepreneurship & Organization Management received 1115 citations as per Google Scholar report
