Gender, Caste-Category and Psychological Well-Being

INTRODUCTION

Well-being means an individual‘s cognitive and affective evolution of her life (Diener, Oishi & Lucas, 2002). It is a technical term for happiness and quality of life. The more satisfied you are with your life, happier you are. In Psychology, Psychological well-being is related with two approaches- first with hedonic approach and second with eudemonics. Hedonic approach is focused on happiness while eudemonics approach focuses on the moral capacity to produce happiness. Varna-system is an ancient classification system of peoples in Indian society. This system classifies people in four broad vernas i.e. category viz Brahmin, Kshatriyas, Vaisya and Sudras. Indian Government classified their citizens into four categories viz General, Back-Ward and Other Back-Ward (OBC), Scheduled Caste (SC) and Schedule Tribes (ST). In daily life SC and OBC caste people face discrimination in jobs, marriages, education, relationship etc. Due to this discrimination, these castes are a soft target of many negative effects such as guilt, shame, anxiety, worry, anger, stress and depression (Bayly, 2001). Mehrotra, (2018) in his paper conclude that in India caste system is a problem for our society, because lower caste people having worse health and educational outcome.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Akhter, (2015) found significant gender difference on psychological well-being. Similar results were also found by Waghmare, (2016); Kotar, (2013); Khanbani, Parvar & Aaghaee, (2014). Ryff and Keyes (1995) found no significant gender difference in psychological well-being. Similar results were found by Fuller, (2005). Singh, (2016) found a significant gender difference in mental health- a component of psychological well-being, of college students. Similar results were also found by Dadhania, (2015). Educational levels of parents, income, occupation, and relationship with family members impact the psychological well-being of students (Darai, 2013). Another study Waghmare, (2017) found that female student has high psychological well-being, efficiency, mental health and interpersonal relations as compared to male students. Sinha and Singh (1998) studied on parent‘s affection and competence on the home adjustment on a sample of 80 students (40 forward castes and 40 backward castes) with age 11 to 14 years. Results showed that students belonging to forward caste were better adjusted in the home than the students belonging to backward caste. In another study Bajpai, (2001) found that scheduled tribe girls were least adjusted compared with backward and general caste girls. Kumar & Singh (2017) found a significant difference between job satisfaction and caste categories. The scheduled caste category teachers were found significantly less satisfied with their job than that of general and other backward caste teachers. caste category and psychological well -being. As the caste of an individual in India Society play a major role in deciding social, economic and psycho-social growth so, researchers tried to study the effect of caste and gender on psychological well-being.

► To study the effect of gender on psychological well-being of college students ► To study the effect of caste-category on psychological well-being of college students ► To study the interactional effect of gender and caste category on psychological well-being.

On the basis of review of literature, the following hypotheses were formulated – ► There is no significant difference between male and female college students in terms of their scores on psychological well-being. ► There is no significant difference among General, OBC and SC category students in terms on their scores on psychological well-being. ► There is no significant interactional effect of gender and caste category on psychological well-being of college students.

2*3 factorial design was used in this research. Details of division of variable were as follows-

For this study 360 students were selected randomly. Out of which there were 120 general, 120 OBC and 120 SC category students. There were 180 male and 180 female in the study. Age range was 16-25 years

For this purpose, Psychological Well-Being questionnaire developed and standardized by Dr. Devendra Singh Sisodia and Pooja Choudhary was used. It is a five-point rating scale containing 50 items. This scale has test-retest reliability 0.90 and validity 0.94.

The researcher called the students into a small group of 10 to 15. After getting the primary information of each student like, age, gender, education and residential locale etc, the researcher read the instruction of psychological well-being scale before the subjects. There was no time limit, so filled in scale was taken back from the subject as end when he/she finishes the work. The subjects were thanked for their valuable cooperation. A written consent -‗willingness to participate in the study‘ was also taken from the students.

Data were analysed with the help of SPSS. To test the hypothesis 2*3 factorial analysis was used. Table-1 shows two- way ANOVA among gender and caste-category on psychological well-being. F-ratio (1, 354) for gender was 0.086 which was not significant. F-ratio (2, 354) for caste-category was 0.252 which was also found non-significant and value of F-ratio (2, 354) for interaction of gender and caste-category was 0.212 which was found non- significant.

Results showed that there was no significant gender difference between male and female college students on their scores on psychological well-being. Mean scores of male subjects was greater than female subjects. Figure-2 showed that male subjects of OBC and SC category have higher psychological well-being than that of female male subject, while General category female subjects have higher psychological well-being than male subjects. Due to this counter effect main effect of gender was not significant. So we accept our first hypothesis i.e there is no significant gender difference in psychological well-being of college students. Our results are congruent with the results of Ryff and Keyes (1995) and Fuller, (2005). There was no significant difference among General, OBC and SC category subjects on their psychological well-being scores. Fig-1 showed that OBC and SC category subjects have higher mean difference among the general, OBC and SC category students on psychological well-being. As SC category subjects are economically weaker, have weak educational background and fall in the lower strata of the society so there is general perception that SC category subjects may have significantly lower PWB in comparison to general and OBC subjects. But to meet out that situations they are given reservation in admission and government jobs, are provided scholarships and many other facilities from the governments so this may the reason for their better psychological well being in comparison to general category students. OBC students have high score on psychological well being then that of general and SC category students. This may be that OBC category subjects in western part of Uttar Pradesh State are economically strong, have social and political recognition. They also have reservation in government jobs and educational institutions which also enhance their feeling of socio-economic security and may the cause of their high PWB. There was no significant interaction effect of gender and caste category on psychological well-being of college students. It is clear from fig-2 that the mean score of male subjects of OBC and SC category is higher than that of male subjects of general category, similarly the mean scores of OBC and General category female is higher than that of SC category female subjects. But general category female have higher mean score than general category male. Though there is a clear interaction effect of gender and caste between general and SC category (figure-1) but the parallel line between OBC and SC category subjects nullify this effect and make the overall interaction effect non-significant. So we accept our third hypothesis.

On the basis of above findings we can conclude that OBC and SC category students have higher PWB to that of general category students. Male students have higher PWB than the female students but these differences were not significant mean that gender and caste category does not affect significantly the psychological well-being of college students. The interaction effect i.e. joint effect of gender and caste category also does not affect the psychological well-being of college students.

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Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Meerut College, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India