Role Stress and Coping Skills among Men and Women Village Panchayat Presidents In Madurai District

Abstract

As presidents of the local government, the Panchayat leaders have to satisfy the needs of the people and implement the plans and the schemes given by the government. They assume a role based on the expectation of the self and others at work place. They have to perform and maintain different role identities in their everyday lives. Whether the role identity is president or father or wife, there are certain demands and expectations that accompany the role. As the number of demands placed upon presidents increases, so does the level of stress. Therefore the present study was undertaken to examine the factors that create stress in the process of participation in the local government and way they handle the stress. The primary objective of the study is to study the level of Role Stress and Coping Skills among Men and Women Village Panchayat Presidents in Madurai District and to suggest different types of coping skills that enable them towards effective performance in terms of the empowerment of their people. The research is descriptive and data was collected based on survey methodology. The study was conducted during the year 2008-11 in Madurai district of Tamil Nadu state. 235 men and 196 women constitute the population of the study and totally 431Panchayat Presidents were taken as subjects. Organizational Role Stress (ORS) was measured with the help of an ORS-scale constructed by Udai Pareek and the COPE inventory used for this research was constructed by Carver. The study proved that there is association between the level of Role Stress and the level of coping skills for the Panchayat Presidents. It is found that (i) those Panchayat presidents who exhibit higher coping capabilities experience lesser role stress and (ii) those presidents with lower coping skills have higher role stress. The psychological dimension of enhancing their leadership is vital and the elected Panchayat presidents must be provided with psychological educational empowerment strategies. It is strongly suggested that the Pancha