Impact of Work from Home on Married Women During COVID-19 Induced Lockdown

Author(s): Karuna Nidhi, Dhruva Nandi, Mehak Segan, Aanchal Anant Awasthi, Rajiv Janardhanan

Background: A shift from “work at office” to “work from home” were take place during COVID-19 pandemic. These times are particularly hard specially for the working women who are mothers and wives. The study was conducted to analyze the work challenges along with the mental health challenges faced by working women in context to work from home.

Materials and methods: A cross sectional survey using google forms was conducted among 209 married women in India. The link of the questionnaire was sent through e-mails, WhatsApp and other social media for the collection of the data. The four-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-4) was used to assess the anxiety and depression among the participants.

Result: It was found that more than 8 hours of working in a day was reported in 60.3% women. In addi-tion,64.6% of women work for 2-5 days in a week. 32.1% of women were unsatisfied with working hours arrangement. The arrangement of working hours was strongly associated with general anxiety regarding coronavirus (p-<0.001), having distractions at home(p-0.005), maintenance of regular schedule (p-0.022) and being not able to complete work on time (p-<0.001).

Conclusion: It was concluded that for married working women, work from home in COVID-19 pandemic can be severely impactful in terms of depression and anxiety. The study showed that majority of married working women were unsatisfied with the work life arrangement amid pandemic which could challenge their physical health, psychological health, and social relationships.