Sudha, R. and S. Gayatridevi
Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women, Coimbatore
Women are an integral part of the workforce in India. The female labour force participation has reduced from 30.6% in 1990 to 20.25% in 2019 (Statista.com, 2021). The causes for this decline are said to be a lack of flexible work timings, lack of family support and lack of satisfaction and contentment in their lives. This paper is an attempt to understand the psychological manifestations of stress and happiness among women working in various structured and unstructured occupations. The study also uses a positive psychology-based intervention to improve stress and hence its impact on happiness. The research design used for the study is a before-after with a control group experimental design. Eighty-four women from various registered and unregistered occupations, aged between 22 to 60 years, were selected using a purposive sampling technique. They were then randomly assigned to an experimental group and a waitlist control group. The Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky, 1999) was used to measure Happiness, and the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory (1967) was used to measure Stress. The positive psychology-based intervention consisted of activities and exercises given virtually for 28 sessions to build self-compassion and positive emotions in the participants of the experimental group. Results revealed that the Positive Psychology Based Intervention improved happiness and also reduced stress levels among working women. There were no significant differences in happiness and stress with regard to the salary drawn or the types of jobs that women were involved in.