Stres en die beroepsvrou: 'n fortigene ondersoek

[摘要] English: The aim of this investigation was to examine the work arid life' circumstances ofcareer women. Career women are subject to a large variety of stressors due togender-based discrimination and an unequal distribution of resources, such asmaterial resources and power. In contrast to the expectation that women's careerinvolvement will exert a negative influence on their well-being due to excessive rolerelatedcommitments and discrimination experienced by many of them, it appearsthat their psychological and physical well-being is better than that of non-workingwomen. In this investigation, the focus was on the interaction between stressorswomen are exposed to, the resistance resources that they have at their disposal, aswell as the coping strategies that they use to overcome stressors in determining theirexperiences of level of job stress and satisfaction with life. The integrated stressand coping model posited by Moos (1994) seems to represent a comprehensivedescription of the stress and coping process, which is related to the transactionalapproach to the study of stress, and, moreover, ties in well with a fortigenicparadigm because it emphasises the role of resources for coping and copingstrategies in the stress-coping process.In carrying out the empirical investigation, a cross-sectional survey was conductedinvolving 732 high-level career women who had at least Gr 11 school training. Theirstress level and causes of stress within and outside the work situation weremeasured using the Experience of Work and Life Circumstances Questionnaire (VanZyl, 1991), while the Sense of Coherence Scale (Antonovsky, 1987), as well as theFortitude Questionnaire (Pretorius, 1997) was used to measure the subjects'personal (i.e. sense of coherence and self-appraisal), as well as contextualresources (i.e. family support and general social support). The COPE-scale (Carveret al., 1989) was used to measure coping strategies. Satisfaction with Life wasmeasured using the Satisfaction with Life Questionnaire (Diener et al., 1985).It was found that the stress levels of women in the group under investigation wereinclined to be high and that their level of satisfaction with life was lower than thelevels reported for comparable groups. They also reported more work-relatedstressors, especially with regard to Career Matters, and Remuneration and fringebenefits. Their personal and contextual resistance resources coincided to a largeextent with the findings for other groups and they also used a variety of problemfocusedand emotionally-focused coping strategies. Significant racial differenceswere found with regard to stress level, level of satisfaction with life, work- andenvironment-related stressors, resistance resources and coping strategies. Somestatistically significant differences were also found when women of different maritalstatuscategories and career categories were compared with regard to non-workrelatedand work-related stressors, personal resources such as self-appraisal and asense of coherence, as well as certain coping strategies. The results indicated thatthe level of satisfaction with life and level of work-related stress yielded a significantnegative correlation. Based on a main component factor analysis of satisfaction withlife and level of work-related stress, the following five factors were selected forinclusion in performing a hierarchical regression analysis of satisfaction with life andwork-related stress: Stressors outside the context of work, Stressors in the workrelatedcontext, Resistance resources, Active coping strategies and Destructivecoping strategies. Demographic factors that exhibit a high correlation withsatisfaction with life and work-related stress were included as a sixth factor.However, it appears that the above-mentioned factors make a larger contribution inexplaining the variance in level of work-related stress than in satisfaction with life. Asfar as the variance in level of satisfaction with life is concerned, demographic factors,such as race; the extent that the women received emotional and tangible supportfrom their marriage partners; and resistance resources, such as sense of coherenceand stressors outside the work, made a statistically significant contribution. Thevariance in the level of a work-related stress was explained to a statisticallysignificant extent in particular by stressors in non-work-related context such aspsychosocial problems, social problems and poor infrastructure as well as bystressors in the context of work such as organisational functioning, and resistanceresources such as a sense of coherence.

[发布机构] University of the Free State