Does Marital Adjustment and Psychological Well-Being Differences in Working and Non-Working Female?

The present study intends to examine marital adjustment and psychological well-being among working and non-working women. The study was carried out on a purposive sample of 40 participants. Marital adjustment inventory and Ruff's Medium Form of Psychological Well- Being Scale was administered on forty working and non-working female participants. Results revealed that working and non-working women did not differ from each other on marital adjustment as well as on psychological well-being but on few dimensions of psychological wellbeing. The findings have been discussed in the light of relevant research evidences. Introduction: - Marriage is by far the most important personal relationship for any person and has been described as the most intimate, delicate and far-reaching relationship between man and woman. The stability and continuity of a marriage is important not just to the members of the marital dyad, but to their family and community as a whole. Traditionally, in Indian culture, people expected their marriages to be arranged by their elder extended kin who continued to play a significant role in the couple's lives. Marriage has been discussed in terms of the interdependence between two individuals (Lewin, 1948) and what happens to one individual is likely to influence the other. As a function of the interdependence in relationship, the nature of the relationship may undergo transformation to accommodate the changes in the partner's health and behavioral status (Kerns & Turk, 1985).The intimate relationship between husband and wives are the cornerstones of interpersonal behavior which not only provide the social context in which people lives but also influence their well-being (Jones & Perlrnan, 1991). Marital adjustment seems complex than it may appear. Basically, in marriage, two persons adjust to each other's sensory, motor, emotional and intellectual capacities. On the personality level they must adjust together to their total environment, including such matters as a new household, children, provision and preparation of food, relatives, friends, relations and work

integrally related to how one views the nature of man and what perspective is valued. Increase in women's participation in labor force over the past few decades have led to increased interest in the effects of employment on women's well-being. Women employment has been investigated as either beneficial (role enhancement hypothesis) or detrimental (role strain hypothesis) to women's psychological well-being. Women employment may be associated with better psychological functioning. This effect may be mediated by the over absorption of one's time and resources within a particular identity role (Elgar & Chester, 2007).
Psychological wellbeing particularly in labor market and more specifically in the context of women employees has received much attention. The occupation is one of the most important factors which bring a lot of changes in the life of women. The occupation brings along with it many expectations, pressures, time demands and commitments which may affect the mental health of women. The relationships between occupation and mental health of women have been studied by several researchers. Thakur and Misra (1999) studied the well-being experiences of 196 employed and 54 unemployed women. It was found that the unemployed women received significantly more social support, in spite of that, the well-being measures indicating mental health was better in employed women. Erlandson (2006) examined psychological wellbeing in working with full time and part time jobs and reported that full time employed women having positive attitude about employment reported better psychological well-being than their counterparts. Sahu and Rath (2003) studies self-efficacy and wellbeing in working and nonworking women in urban areas and found positive correlation between self-efficacy and wellbeing and added that marriage employment and parenthood are associated with good mental and physical health. Rastogi  On the other hand, a comparative study was done on the psychological symptoms observed in the working women and housewives were assessed on the psychological symptoms scanning scale and findings showed that anxiety, phobia, paranoia and psychosomatic subscales points and average of symptoms were significantly higher in the housewives (Cilli, et al., 2000).
The overview of the literature suggests working class of women are more satisfied and adjusted in their marital life (Nathawat & Mathur, 1993;Rogers & May, 2003). As far as the psychological wellbeing is concerned, lack of consensus seems about the findings, some researchers are of this view that psychological wellbeing is better in employed woman (Sahu & Rath, 2003;Thakur & Misra, 1999) while others hold different view (Cilli et al., 2000).
It is evident through the literature that in the present era of globalization and industrialization, women are educated and work keeping their interest in mind. This not only provides recognition to the women but also adds their recognition to the society. However, due to this women esp. employed faces many problems. They had adjustment relationship problem with the family members, children and work place and especially with their married life. They face stress because of multiplicity of worked performed by them, which in turn affects their wellbeing too. Thus, to know the nature of marital adjustment and psychological well-being in working and non-working women, the present study makes an attempt to examine the marital adjustment and psychological well-being of working and non-working women.

Sample:
The present study was carried out on a sample of 40 couples with the marital life ranging from of 10 to 15 years residents of Varanasi city, India. Twenty working women and twenty nonworking women along with their spouses participated in the present study. All the couples were selected from middle class socio-economic strata with a minimum qualification (68.7% graduation and 31.3% post-graduation) belonging to the urban (77.5%) and rural (22.5%) area.
Sixty percent of couples belonged from joint family while, 40% were from nuclear family. The newly married couples were excluded from the present study because the new marriage itself puts a number of adjustment demands on the couples. Mean age of working and nonworking female was 34.52.

Tools:
Following is a brief description of the tool used in the present study along with its psychometric properties. The self-report inventory were used in the present research and in addition to the personal data sheet were used that collected demographic information such as name, age, gender, education, socio-economic status, nature of job, class of job, job-timing, nature of the family, ecological area -urban/rural etc. of the participants.

Marital adjustment was measured by Marital adjustment inventory developed by Har
Mohan Singh was used to measure the quality of a relationship between two persons who are married. It is a self-report scale consisted of 20 items consisting 10 point rating scores. The reliability and validity of this inventory was found satisfactory.

 Psychological well-being
Psychological wellbeing was measured by using Ryff's (1989)  For each category, a high score indicates that a respondent has a mastery of that area in her life. Conversely a low score shows that the respondent struggles to feel comfortable with that particular concept.

Procedure:
The above-mentioned scale was used to assess marital adjustment of the working and non-working women and their spouses. The participants were selected purposively. The scale was given to each participant individually and was administered as per the standard instructions printed with scale. However, in any case, instructions related to the marital adjustment inventory was clearly explained to each participant and their queries (if any) were properly attended. In addition to it, each participant was requested to ensure that they have responded to each and every item of the test booklet. The confidentiality of their responses was assured to them. The complete self-report scale was scored as per the standard scoring procedure and data was analyzed by using appropriate statistics. The independent t-test was performed to test the present hypothesis of the study.

Results
In order to address the objective of the present study, independent sample t-test was calculated and the findings have been tabulated.  Perusal of the Table 2