October 10, 2021

CHALLENGES FACED BY WORKING WOMEN

A study about the problems or the challenges that are confronted

by a working women in India, a developing nation, and what is the
real position of a women employee in our country

Komal Singh
Student [B.A.LL.B (Hons.)]
ABSTRACT
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by
area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. She is also
known as a conventional state, having range in religions, culture, etc. Here, the position of the women
(ladies) is predominantly family, own circle of relatives and limited to domiciliary problems. In some
cases, women may find employment as nurses, teachers, instructors withinside the being concerned and
nurturing sectors. But even though well-certified women engineers or managers or geologists are
available, a male of identical qualification is preferred.

Therefore, the top motive of the study was to apprehend the hassles and problems underwent by
working women in India. It blanketed figuring out the important socio-economic attributes contributing
to women’s status, safety, and security, and to study women’s involvement in various activities for
enhancing family, community, and society. Also, to identify the factors preventing or stopping women
personnel from aspiring for better posts. Further, the research attempts to give an explanation for the
actual portrait of working women and try to locate solutions to the same.

Keywords: Challenges, Conventional, Hassles, Women workers, Solutions

INTRODUCTION
Within the human history, ladies have been as crucial in making history as men have been. In truth,
higher status for ladies vis-à-vis work and work performed by them in a society may be
a noteworthy marker of a nation’s overall advance.

Traditionally Indian ladies had been domestic creators but within later decades, legitimate instruction,
and way better mindfulness, in expansion to the ever-increasing fetched of living has made them to go
out and select careers. In a patriarchal society like India, it is still accepted that a man is the essential
bread champ of his family. In spite of the fact that Indian ladies have begun working exterior their
homes but still, they have a long way to go both culturally, socially, and financially, to bring in positive
attitudinal changes within the mind-set of individuals.

Women have been treated as moment course citizens since time immemorial. Patriarchal standards in a
male overwhelmed society have directed the dos and don’ts to ladies in each viewpoint of their lives,
from conducting themselves in public. Working women i.e., those who are in
paid work, confront issues at the working environment just by virtue of their being women also the
inbuilt conviction that women are unfit of dealing with challenging occupations and are
less effective than men influence the payment of unequal pay rates and compensation for the same job.

Apart from that Numerous Indian families are still living as joint families beside the guardians and in-
laws. This includes to their stress further since they got to please all the family individuals of
her spouse. Listen to their complaints that they make against her and turn hard of hearing ears towards

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them and so on. In general, majority of women in India look towards or live within the trust and hope
that things will alter soon.

OBJECTIVE:
The present study therefore aims at finding out if women confront challenges within the working
environments which pose issues for them, and what are those challenges that women confront working
within the different segments and what valid arrangements and adapting components can be advertised
to assist them reduce such problems, so that women can understand their own value and ability to face
problems in different ways as understanding the problems in a clear way would assist us in finding
adequate answers in reducing the problems.

Implication of the Study

The study would offer assistance to us in understanding the present status of women in our society
what kind of issues they are going through

1. To discover out conceivable arrangements for problems and issues confronted by working ladies.

2. To discover out the gaps between the issues confronted and plausible solutions to
the issues confronted by working women.

3. The study can yield results that can offer assistance us in superior understanding the issues and
challenges confronted by working ladies.

4. A few arrangements can be advertised for improvement of working ladies within the working
environment.

5. To form mindfulness or to create awareness among the society about the equal importance of men
and women.

6. To improve the existing status and security of the women.

METHODOLOGY:
The methodology employed here essentially descriptive i.e., The strategy utilized by this paper
is basically expressive or a descriptive one . It tries to understand the different challenges
that women in India confront at the workplace by examining significant information collected
from different secondary sources. The paper concludes with certain suggestions which
would ensure that women enjoy break even with rights in a secure and secure work environment.

Challenges Gone Up Against by Women in India Pg.2

LITERATURE REVIEW:
It is an open truth that working women have to face problems just by virtue of their being women
Brockhaus (1980). Working women here are referred to those who are in paid employment. Social
attitude to the role of women lags much behind the law. This attitude which considers women fit for
certain jobs and not for other jobs is determined by those who recruit the employees. Thus, women find
employment easily as nurses, doctors, and teachers in the care and nurturing sectors, and secretaries or
assembling jobs in the routine submissive sectors. But even if well qualified women engineers or
managers or geologists are available, preference will be given to a male of equal qualification. A
gender bias creates an obstacle at the recruitment stage itself.

Colleagues offer unwanted attention which can still be shaken off, but a woman is placed in a difficult
situation if the higher officer demands sexual favors. If refused, the boss can easily take it out on the
woman in other ways to make life miserable for her. There have been several cases of sexual
harassment recently involving even the senior women officials. On the other hand, if a woman is
praised for her work or promoted on merit, her colleagues do not hesitate to attribute it to sexual favors
Birley (1989).

Technological advancement results in retrenchment of women employees. No one thinks of upgrading

their skills. Maternity leave is seldom given. It is much easier to terminate the woman’s employment
and hire someone else. Trade unions do little to ameliorate the lot of women workers. Women’s issues
do not occur on the priority list of most of the trade unions. Women going to work are often subject to
sexual harassment. Public transport system is overcrowded, and men take advantage of the
circumstances to physically harass women (Lurie 1998).

Working women in India are confronted with lot extra demanding situations than their counterparts in
the other parts of the world. In India, men do now no longer share on most of the family chores, it is
women who have to cook, clean the house, do the dishes, wash clothes, get their kids prepared for
school, etc. Men simply took care of few chores which are to be dealt outside the house. So, the
essential burden of running the family is at the shoulders of women. It became okay for women to
address all of the chores so long as they have been homemakers. Now with their growing need for
getting some income for the family, they ought to work all of the harder. They have to absorb a nine to
five task plus managing all of the household chores that they handled as a homemaker. Men’s position
has now no longer modified much (Neetu, 2009).

They have to handle harassments at their workplace, sometimes just overlook things to ensure that their
job is not jeopardized in anyway. Many Indian families are still living as joint families along with the
parents and in-laws. This adds to their stress, further because they have to please all the family
members of their husbands. These women have to listen to the complaints made against them and turn
deaf ears towards them if need be. Overall, majority of women in India look towards or live in the hope
that things will change. Some of us have given up that hope and learnt to accept that nothing can be
done about it. India has a long way to go before our women will be able to live their lives to the fullest
(Neetu, 2009).

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When it comes to remuneration, the law proclaims equality, but it is seldom put into practice. The
inbuilt conviction that women are capable of less work than men or less efficient than men governs this
injustice of unequal salaries and wages for the same job. The age-old belief of male superiority over
women creates several hurdles for women at their place of work. Women on the way up the corporate
ladder discover that they must be much better than their male colleagues to reach the top. Once at the
top male colleagues and subordinates often expect much greater expertise and efficiency from a woman
boss than from a male boss. Conditioned by social and psychological tradition women colleagues do
not lend support to their own sex. Working in such conditions inevitably put much greater strain on
women than what men experience. These problems tend to make women less eager to progress in their
careers. Indeed, many of them choose fewer demanding jobs for which they may even be over-
qualified. A woman’s work is not merely confined to paid employment (Rahul, 2012).

The psychological pressure of all this can easily lead to a woman quitting her job. Most of the problems
that beset working women are in reality rooted in the social perspective of the position of women.
Traditionally, men are seen as the bread winner and women as the housekeepers and child bearers. This
typecast role model continues to put obstacles before the working women. A fundamental change is
required in the attitudes of the employers, policy makers, family members and other relatives and the
public at large(Rahul, 2012)

There is no country on earth where women get equal pay as men for equal work. Not even the Nordic
countries with impressively high overall gender parity can boast of equality when it comes to the pay
packet. India has the distinction of being the lowest ranked on gender parity, which includes pay parity,
among the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies. This was revealed in the Global Gender
Gap Report of 2010. Gender parity in wages has been a global concern for about a century now. Yet
progress has been slow after the initial victories. The latest Monster Salary Index report provides a
wage analysis based on a dataset covering the years 2013, 2014 and the first three quarters of 2015.The
report is based on data collected from the paycheck.in salary calculator and the Monster salary index
across eight different sectors. On the whole, the report finds that the gender pay gap in India is 25.4
percent. This means the median hourly wage for a woman is 25.4 percent less than the median hourly
wage for a man. According to the report, some of the reasons behind gender pay gap could be the
preference for male employees over female employees, preference for promotion of male employees to
supervisory positions and career breaks of women due to parenthood duties and other socio-cultural
factors (Sampurna, 2017)

Women are discriminated at every stage of their working sphere. They are often deprived of
promotions and growth opportunities at workplaces. A majority of working women continue to be
denied their right to equal pay, under the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 and are underpaid in
comparison to their male counterpart. This is usually the case in factories and labor-oriented industries
etc. Most of the time they are deprived of important assignments by underestimating their intellectual
level.(P.V. Gouri. 2019)

Other than this the WOMEN IN WORKPLACE REPORT- 2021 SAYS “In spite of the challenges
of the COVID-19 crisis, women’s representation although improved across the levels of the corporate
pipeline in 2020. This is an encouraging sign and worth celebrating but there are also persistent gaps in

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it, discrimination to women or the challenges of working women continue to be there. Like promotions
at the first step up to manager are not equitable, and women of color lose ground in representation at
every level.”

CHALLENGES CONFRONTED BY WOMEN AT WORKPLACE:

1.) GENDER BIASES:

Gender biases begin to take place at a very early stage for Indian women. It is very difficult to accept
the fact that women are also capable of working shoulder to shoulder with men. Indian society supports
male dominance in all major, important, and challenging tasks whereas women are considered to be
weak and only capable of bearing lesser work pressure at the workplace. The potential and capabilities
of Indian women have always been underestimated in regard of their recruitments, salary issues and
promotions. In many families, even if woman is working, her all salaries are given to her husband,
father in-law or elder member of the family and in this way, her independence is on the superficial
level. Though woman is working, still she has to depend on somebody

2.) UNEQUAL OPPORTUNITIES IN JOB:

One of the most unfortunate challenges for women that they are subject to continue at work as such
despite having required qualifications, skills, talent, hard work and performance and she is overlooked
as well as low rated in comparison to her male colleagues. This is one reason, why many women have
to settle down at less challenging jobs than their capabilities/talent, or get stuck at one point of career
with no opportunities for further growth
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 3.) SEXUAL HARASSMENT:

Another important issue that working women encounter is sexual harassment. A huge percentage of
working women endure sexual harassment at work, whether they are in the unorganized or organized
sector, whether they are illiterate, low-paid laborer or highly educated, high-paid executives.
Regardless of their rank, personal attributes, or type of employment, practically all working women are
subjected to sexual harassment nowadays. They are subjected to sexual harassment on public
transportation, at work, at schools and hospitals, at home, and even in police stations while filing
complaints. The fact that the law enforcers and protectors are breaching, and outraging women's
modesty is frightening. Most of the women tend to be concentrated in the poor service jobs whereas
men are in an immediate supervisory position, which gives them an opportunity to exploit their
subordinate women.

4.) MENTAL HARASSMENT:

It is a long-held belief that women are less capable and inefficient workers than men. Women are held
back by a mindset that believes women are unsuited for certain jobs. Despite constitutional provisions,
gender bias causes barriers and hinders their recruitment. Furthermore, the same mentality also governs
the injustice of unequal pay for the same job. Working in such circumstances undoubtedly causes more
strain on women as compared to men in our society. All these results in making them (women) less
enthusiastic about their careers.

5.) POOR WORK-LIFE BALANCE:

Work life balance refers to the harmony that exists between an individual's personal and professional
lives. Work-life balance is viewed more as a women's issue due to the traditional mindset in which the
woman is primarily responsible for the smooth running of the day-to-day affairs of the family
regardless of her job profile and official responsibilities, which is why managing work and family
responsibilities can be very difficult for women. The dynamics of the work environment have put
immense strain on working women, who must juggle two full-time jobs — one at the office and one at
home. Such an imbalance has a negative impact on one's personal life. It has resulted in social risks
such as an increase in divorces and infertility due to elevated stress levels.

6.) LACK OF FAMILY SUPPORT:

Lack of sufficient family support is another issue that the working women suffers through. At times,
the family does not encourage women to leave the housework and work in the office. They also oppose
women working late in the office, which hampers women's effectiveness and undermines their
advancement.

7.) CHALLENGES TO SAFETY & DIGNITY:

Typically, the orthodox mindset in the Indian society makes it difficult for a working woman to balance
her domestic environment with the professional life. In some families, it may not be acceptable to work
after six o’clock. Those families that do accept these working hours may experience considerable

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anxiety every day about a woman’s safety while traveling. So many issues affect a working woman
because she is closely protected or watched by her family and the society

8.) Additional REASONS:

There are a number of other factors limiting or providing obstacles for working women in India and
around the world today. These factors can be anything like lack of proper education, training, or family
support, etc. The Gender Gap Index report 2021 shows that the discrimination between men and
women in India has been increased by a high percentage, which is also a contributing factor to the
challenges of a women.

LAWS PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN AT WORKPLACE:

1.) Equal Remuneration Act:

This law is applicable to all employees including those in the private and government sectors. It states
that employees of both genders are doing the same or similar work of the same value be paid equal
remuneration in cash and kind.

2.) Maternity Benefits Act:

According to this Act a woman is entitled to payment during her maternity leave at the rate at which
she was working prior to the leave period.

3.) The Factory Act of 1948, Mines Act of 1952,Plantation Labour Act of 1951:

In India the acts were passed to protect and regulate the wages of women from time to time without
any discrimination.

RECOMMENDED SOLUTIONS:
✓ Partners can be more sensitive to women’s needs, and counter tradition by helping their wives
perform daily tasks and take care of children.

✓ Organizations should have an internal code to ensure security of women employees and take
measures to ensure that they discharge their job in a secure atmosphere.

✓ Flexible timing and Possibility to work from home are required for working women.

✓ Governments should make it mandatory for companies to install Global Positioning System
(GPS) in vehicles carrying women, in all industries which engage women in night shifts.

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 ✓ Providing self-defense training to women; installing safety devices and CCTVs at the
workplace; undertaking police verification of cab drivers, security guards etc.

✓ Childcare facilities and Childcare leave for working women should be provided by every
organization.

Tips of Work life Balance

Work-life balance, according to Jim Bird, CEO of worklifebalance.com, does not imply an equal
balance of professional and personal life. It is the precise coordination of a person's various hobbies,
which may include family, work, leisure, social obligations, health, career, and spirituality. While some
pursuits take more concentration, others may require less. Work-life balance will arise from striking a
fine equilibrium by prioritizing these human aspirations.

The Three Factor Model recommends the Work-Life Balance Tips. The key to achieving a healthy
work-life balance, according to this approach, is to maintain a balance of three factors: knowledge,
skills, and behaviour in both family and professional life. Working women can engage effectively in
their numerous roles as mother, spouse, sister, daughter, and so on if they have a good understanding of
themselves, others, and their responsibilities in family life. It also allows individuals to form good
relationships with others and clarifies their responsibilities in their various roles. Knowing their
organization, the working environment, and the responsibilities that they must perform can help them
strike the correct balance for their career and personnel.

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Another aspect that influences working women's work-life balance is their ability to balance family and
career. She should keep the peace in the family by communicating her feelings and encourage others to
do the same. She should also interact effectively. Women in the workplace must be capable of making
decisions, possess technical skills, and maintain efficient communication with their colleagues.
Working women must also manage their behaviour by keeping relationships with family members and
remaining socially active through informal interactions. Their behaviour in workplace also should be
role based and therefore professional and formal.

CONCLUSION
The key to improving a working woman's social position is primarily in her own hands. Women must
be more aggressive and conscious of their own rights both at home and at work. Women's
empowerment cannot be realised unless a woman decides to speak out against her exploitation, whether
on an economic, social, or sexual basis.

Second, policy implementation must be closely monitored, and statistics on women's engagement in the
organization must be evaluated on a regular basis. This ensures that top management is aware of any
gender discrepancies within the organization and that appropriate steps are taken to close such gaps.

Also, as we all know, women workers are frequently subjected to sexual harassment, so the
government should impose stricter penalties for these types of offences. Additionally, public
transportation can be dangerous for women, so the government should do more inspections.

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Aside from that, society and the family are two critical institutions that can work to improve the status
of working women in India. The spouse and other family members must be encouraging to the woman
who works outside the home. They must share household responsibilities in order for her to be able to
use her skills outside of the home. Because India is a traditionally patriarchal and male-dominated
nation, a genuine elevation of working women's status in society would remain a distant dream unless
the average Indian man adopts a more positive and liberal outlook towards women.

REFERENCES:
1) “Challenges And Problems of a Working Woman” May 2019 by P V Gouri Prabha

2) https://worklifebalance.com/

3) https://www.weforum.org/reports/ab6795a1-960c-42b2-b3d5-587eccda6023

4) https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace

5) Varsha Kumari(2014), “PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGESFACED BY URBAN WORKING

WOMEN IN INDIA” , A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of Humanities and Social
Sciences.

6) Dr. Kamini B. Dashora(2013), “Problems Faced by Working Women in India”, International

Journal of Advanced Research in Management and Social Sciences, ISSN: 2278-6236.

7) Bhuvaneshwari M. (2013), “A Case Study on Psychological and Physical Stress Undergone by

Married Working Women”, IOSR Journal of Business and Management.

8) https://www.hrkatha.com/research/top-10-challenges-working-women-face-worldwide/

9) “Challenges and Problems Faced by Women Workers in India” by Azadeh Barati (Research
Scholar in Commerce) and Rooh Ollah Arab (Research Scholar in Commerce) at University of
Kerala, Trivandrum, Kerala, and Seyed Saadat Masoumi Research Scholar in Commerce,
Bharati Vidya Peeth University, Pune, Maharashtra

10) Andal, N. (2002). Women and Indian society: Options and constraints. New Delhi: Rawat
Publications.

11) Chandra, S. K. (1993). Women’s development: problems and prospects.

12) Majumdar, M. (2004). Social status of women in India. New Delhi: Dominant Publishers and
Distributors

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 13) Challenges and risks faced by the working women in government organizations: An insight
from Asian countries Huagui Zhu , Hafiz Ghufran Ali Khan and Muhammad Ilyas

14) https://ncrb.gov.in/sites/default/files/crime_in_india_table_additional_table_chapter_reports/Ta
ble%203A.2_2.pdf

15) ‘PROBLEMS FACED BY WORKING WOMEN IN INDIA’ by Dr. Kamini B. Dashora

16) ‘Indian Women in the Workplace: Problems and Challenges’ Sampurna Dutta Guest Lecturer,
Department of Political Science Northeastern Hill University, Shillong, India

Thankyou
By- Komal Singh
Amity Law School (B.A.LL.B), Gwalior

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