Female hotel staff are struggling to cope with high levels of stress, with married women affected more severely because of the pressures of trying to maintain a home-workplace balance, according to a research study by Dr Sheeba Hamid of Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, India.
“Heavy schedules and tighter deadlines at hotel and home both are telling on the health of married women workers. They are becoming prone to restlessness and insomnia. The major cause identified in the study for these problems is domestic stress,” wrote Dr Hamid.
The study was one of several interesting and creative pieces of research presented at annual academic conference of the Asia-Pacific Council on Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education (APacCHRIE) in Hong Kong earlier this month.
Although the scope of the study was confined to hotels in Delhi, its results have worldwide relevance because they highlight a relatively unseen aspect of the global tourism boom – under the external veneer of the PR spin and glamorous branding image lies a high-stress lifestyle of overwork, low pay and high pressure.
Although other research studies have dwelt more generically on the links between stress and job satisfaction, as well as stress-related illnesses, this study focused more clearly on the relationship between levels of stress and job satisfaction among female hotel personnel on the basis of their marital, parental and managerial status.
Said the study, “Delhi has witnessed tremendous boom in the hotel industry in recent years, especially after hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2010. As the competitive pressure increases, hotel staff are bound to face plenty of stress in the wake of tighter deadlines, heavier schedules, new projects, pressure to perform at peak levels all the time, expansion of technology resulting in heightened expectations of productivity, constant alertness and following a non-failing star hotel work culture.”
Even though women comprise 40-45% of the star-rated hotel workforce in Delhi, research literature on them is “practically negligible”, the study said.
“It was also noticeable during the survey that women are largely visible at non-managerial as opposed to managerial positions in star hotels in Delhi. Women workers are mostly visible in guest relations and HR departments. “Managerial positions are mostly occupied by them in housekeeping, essentially considered to be a female forte and occasionally in guest relations and the human resources department. This brings out the fact that Indian males in the workplace continue to recycle the stereotyped images of women.”
In addition to desk research, discussions and interviews, a structured questionnaire was given to different categories of women workers in 40 star-rated Delhi hotels. Out of 330 questionnaires distributed, 308 were returned. Six were rejected on the basis of inadequate information.
Dr Hamid wrote, “The response to the study was encouraging and leads (the researcher) to believe that women in India are slowly learning to become vocal about what they want and deserve both at home and in the workplace.”
The study categorised the respondents in six categories: unmarried; married with children; married without children; unmarried, managerial status; married, without children, managerial status; married, with children, managerial status.
“Today’s fast paced lifestyle calls for managing high levels of competition, stress, tension and work/life balance,” said the study. “The high price to pay for this lifestyle wreaks havoc on human minds and results in stressed-out individuals. People are not able to manage all the demands on them and buckle under pressure. Stress brings failure and failure brings more stress which becomes a vicious cycle, eventually resulting in falling performance.
“As further pointed out by the author, the individual member goes through humiliation as she is not able to match the performance level of others, and since performance alone is the key for any hike in salary or winning an award, underperformance at work leads to low level of morale and job satisfaction.”
Dr Hamid noted that although men and women both have proved their mettle in the corporate world globally, “the fact remains that women are in the minority and invisible to quite an extent in leadership roles in India.” They also face “pressure of social and role constraints imposed upon them by society, family and quite surprisingly by women themselves.
“This is because women in India are still juggling between being the ‘man on the job’ and the otherwise conventional role of a homemaker. There are no kudos for her exemplary performance at work unless she is a perfect wife, mother and daughter and so on.
“Another social reality in India is that there is an increased need for women’s earnings [because of the] rise in family expenses. She has been readily accepted as co-breadwinner but not yet unburdened from her exclusive domestic responsibilities.”
