Comments on: Why Are Indian Women So Stressed Out?

By: Tamal Roy

Tamal Roy — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 06:49:00 +0000

The study seems to be only in urban areas and in that only of middle/high income working women. To know India one must travel across rural areas, feel the pulse and not by answers to a set of questions as done in any study. Poor by appearance may be, Indian woman is still Devi( Goddess), the Shakti, who is stress buster not under stress. The basic reason of stress in urban working women is due to platonic need in their life. I would like the study group to visit rural and poor slum areas and get re-opinionated after seeing smiling faces..

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 07:22:00 +0000

All the comments given in the articles are valid. But the commentators are also responsible to the problems in their own organizations.
In our country communication is always top down and commands also follow suit. Peer level communication on the professional front is minimal except for profession/ technical purpose. Bottom up response survey is rarely done. So when ever it is done they always end up as complaints and demands. Women with their dual roles as family central and professional worker faces larger problems in this circumstances than the men counterparts. Few successful women, in order to circumvent this stress adapt a commandeer attitude and survive.

By: Meera

Meera — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:55:00 +0000

Very valid points. For a moment, keep aside women, let us ask ourselves as to how many roles have we created. Take an example of IT industry, most of the companies have conventional roles like technical or managerial. Very few companies have sales, pre-sales, solution, marketing etc which are limited in number.
Take another section, while we expect people to operate round the clock (normal Indian working hours, night teleconference with Global interfaces), have we ever come up with part time roles, specialized roles, sharing roles etc ? You will have to sustain the resistance for so long that one wonders as to the objective of battling, obviously not for self, but for the organization.
How often do we see hype of work pressure vs the actual work ? Don’t you see redundancy, unnecessary urgency, inability to prioritize or understand the context that creates this hype of pressure. Typically, if so many had actual pressure as the hype projects, the advancement, depth & quality would have significantly improved.
Now, coming to women as stressed individual, wouldn’t she have found a productive and less stressed environment if she had been given any one of the options provided above.
India is more than 30 years old in the IT sector, what are we trying to depict ourselves. We are unable to innovate roles, accommodate diversity, incapable of addressing our own market with the technological advancement (growing gap rags-riches), killing agriculture ….
Similar stories in other segments also, currently more depressing, since we were veterans in the past.

By: Meera

Meera — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:37:00 +0000

Hema is no longer with Infosys

By: Lakshmi Sharma

Lakshmi Sharma — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:33:00 +0000

I completely agree with this. Even though Indian women find themselves in very big firms and establishments, identity as working women and value for their dreams(encouragement) has to improve a lot in society. Women must be responsible for all household work and it is very hard to change the mentality of people around to understand and share the responsibility.
Sometimes it is so hard to explain people that you end up spoiling relationships with people which I have seen in many cases.

By: PRATYUSH PUSHKAR

PRATYUSH PUSHKAR — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 06:21:00 +0000

India might be one of the fastest growing economies in the world but the management practices are still archaic. You “have” to stay at the office for 9hours min as time spent at office at the proxy to performance in at-least 99% of the work places.
No flexi-time, few leaves for maternity etc. Also the need to out career ahead of your life is becoming the norm rather than the exception and women are following suit. This is followed by the typical Indian “societal” view that marriage & children are the responsibility of the women and not the man. And somewhere there, working women find themselves at cross roads and the stress becomes a way of life.
We need to change as a society and our work places need to adapt to the same, for there is no way a nation or even a company can prosper without women excelling at work.

By: PRATYUSH PUSHKAR

PRATYUSH PUSHKAR — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 06:21:00 +0000

By: PRATYUSH PUSHKAR

PRATYUSH PUSHKAR — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 06:21:00 +0000

By: Mayank Arora

Mayank Arora — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 04:31:00 +0000

Interesting!

By: Mundasingh Choudhary

Mundasingh Choudhary — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 09:07:00 +0000

@Hema Ravichandar,since you know that the reasons behind the stress on indian women are rigid policies and rewards based on effort why dont you start implementing the changes in your organisation itself ? infosys has a policy stipulating that each employee must log 9.15 hours a day irrespective of whether he finishes the given work in 5 hours or 6 hours . Are you unaware of such meaningless policies that hold sway in your own organisation . Instead of putting the blame on society and mindsets of people , why don’t you bring in changes first in your own organisation or is it that people just talk the walk but dont walk the talk

By: Shaivalini Singh

Shaivalini Singh — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 06:17:00 +0000

Truth is the mindset, unless that undergoes change even working will not solve the stress.
At work place women are just women, and rarely taken for their being. It is the outlook so ingrained in our culture that is a challenge.