Work at Night: Psychological Health Implication of Night Work on Women Call Center Employees

Amrita Gupta , International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

India has experienced radical changes in employment pattern of women. Indian women have moved beyond conventional occupations and are working at night for the international Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). The study is based on primary data collected from women employees of international BPO in Mumbai, India. GHQ-12 and Coping Checklist is used for understanding psychological health and coping mechanisms respectively. Night work, highly pressurized work environment, emotional labor, stringent supervision and monitoring, dual identities, fake accent and changed lifestyle resulted in psychological distress among 55% of women employees. Married women, women with dependents at home, staying in joint family, using pseudo identity for dealing with clients and women taking the job as a career option were more likely to experience psychological distress. To deal with psychological distress, women mainly employed positive coping mechanisms but with the increase in psychological distress, there was an increase in use of negative coping mechanisms.

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 Presented in Session 5. Health & Mortality 1