The Everyday lives and coping Strategies of women in Delhi; Discerning roots of Psychological Empowerment: An Ethnographic Study

This is an ethnographic study based on inductive reasoning inspired by everyday life coping of slum women in Delhi. Evidences from field work were found to be congruent with the underlying assumptions of Humanistic and analytical psychology, perspectives which ascertain positive human values and life orientation such as growth, and fulfillment, making it difficult to completely neglect strategies for adaptability, positive coping, and adjustment, which are having a positive influence in everyday lives of slum women in their day-day life. The focus of this study is not to explore the daily life concerns, but to highlight how these concerns are addressed by slum women, with regard to their coping strategies.  The objective of this study was to bring into light the phenomenon of positive adaptability towards daily life concerns, in context with slum women by exploring three coping strategies given by Endler and Parker. Task-oriented strategy, Emotion-oriented strategy, and, Avoidance-oriented strategy three categories which were used to categorize the responses towards daily life stressors.  Finally this study attempts to fill in the prevailing literature gap in the context of the conceptualization of psychological empowerment for slum women based on the findings of this study and trace the roots of psychological empowerment using the perspectives of psychology. This study illustrates analysis of ethnographic records of 50 informants from various slums in Delhi.