Occupational Stress of Women Workforce in the IT Industry: With Special Reference to Colombo District, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Occupational stress is the physical or emotional response people have when they are working with demands and situations that are not matched to employee’s knowledge and abilities. Occupational stress is one of the major problems for women in IT industry. It influences the behavior of employees towards her co-workers, administration and most importantly it affects to productivity. The main objective of this study is to find out the key factors which are manifesting occupational stress of women IT professionals, Colombo district, Sri Lanka. To conduct this survey, primary data was collected through questionnaires from 81 employees work in Colombo district under cluster sampling method to identify the factors affecting to the occupational stress of women employees in IT industry. Descriptive statistic results of this study highlights that there are considerable number of women employees under high stress level. Furthermore, factors such as working environment condition, role conflict, co- worker support, work-life balance, mental demand affect to occupational stress of these employees are significant with -0.525, -0.716, -0.751, -0.770, -0.585 correlations respectively.