Occupational Stress among Women Managers

Headnote

Abstract

Purpose: One of the Malaysian national development agenda in Tenth Malaysian plan is to empower women. More attentions need to be paid by practitioners on women employment related issues such as occupational stress. It is vital to understand the unique stressors faced by women to increase their well-being in workplace. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and identify the causes of occupational stress among women middle managers. This study examines the relationship between (i) work-family conflict, (ii) barriers to career achievement, and (iii) workplace social support towards occupational stress among women middle managers in Malaysia.

Design/methodology/approach: The primary data for this study was collected using self-administered questionnaires from 285 female middle managers in Malaysia urban areas.

Findings: The major findings of this study are that work-family conflict and barriers to carrier achievement were positively related to occupational stress among women middle managers, while workplace social support was found to be insignificant in this study.

Practical implication: This paper offers practical recommendations to organizations on how to deal with women middle managers' occupational stress.

Originality/value: This is one of the original studies about occupational stress among women middle managers in Malaysia.

Keywords-stress; women managers; Malaysia

Paper type: Research Paper

Introduction

One of the Malaysian national development agenda in Tenth Malaysian plan is to empower women. More attentions need to be paid by practitioners on women employment related issues such as occupational stress. It is vital to understand the unique stressors faced by women to increase their well-being in workplace, which encourage their continuous contribution to the Malaysian economy development. Occupational stress among women middle managers has a significant impact on their work performance and satisfaction thereby affects their productivity and effectiveness in organizational performance.

Occupational stress is a significant workplace issue that received considerable concern in developing countries (Taap Manshor et al., 2003). Lack of studies on occupational stress in Asian developing countries has motivated researchers to focus more on this issue (Kortum, Leka and Cox, 2010). For example, previous studies have been conducted to examine the meaning, causes and consequences of occupational stress in Malaysia. However, these studies fail to provide insights on women's occupational stress in Malaysia.

Women managers in Malaysia are found to be more stressful than men in...