A Study on the Dual Role of Working Women in the Information Technology Sector in Bangalore

A Study on the Dual Role of Working Women in the Information Technology Sector in Bangalore

This study is conducted among married working women in the Information Technology sector in Bangalore. It is an effort to understand the marginalized position of married working women in terms of decision making power and pay scale parity at the workplace. It also tries to study the challenges married women face while dealing with both spheres of life i.e. domestic and place of work. This study is also an attempt to understand those factors that affect womens work participation in the Information Technology sector. In a patriarchal society, socialization differs for men and women. Women are socialized to be feminine, family and household work is considered their main priority; while men are always socialized to be the head of the family and are considered the primary breadwinners. The study looks at the aspect of dual roles of women and tries to explain how the dual roles affect their work. The topic of the study has been formulated after conducting informal conversations with married women in the Information Technology sector. The data revealed that despite having good educational degrees ?? equivalent to men ?? they face differential treatment while getting opportunities at the workplace such as onsite opportunities. They also do not enjoy the status of being the primary earner in their family and household work is still considered their primary work. The title clearly reflects the impact of dual roles of married women on work participation in the Information Technology sector. The Information Technology sector has been chosen for the present study in order to understand the position of women in this sector, to understand their level of work participation and how the dual role affects their work participation. Snowball sampling method has been used to select the samples. The total sample size was 120. Five companies were selected among the top 100 companies in the south area of Bangalore. The primary data has been collected using questionnaires and unstructured interviews. This dissertation is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction to the study which includes the Information Technology industry in India and Bangalore, and the dual role of women. It discusses how the Information Technology industry has boomed in India. It also describes the two roles i.e. domestic and professional roles in the lives of working women. The second chapter discusses review of literatures. It includes journal articles and books on the dual role of women and the Information Technology industry. The third chapter explains the methodology used for the study. This has offered guidance to the researcher in framing objectives and described the population and sampling technique for the study. The analysis and interpretation of the data have been discussed in chapter four. The data was analysed and graphic representation has been done using SPSS (Statistical Package of Social Sciences). Chapter five explains the summary and conclusion of the study. The findings of the study have been categorized on the basis of the research objectives.

Bhardwaj Poonam

Department of Sociology