A Study on Marital Satisfaction among Women

For the growth of a civilization and a nation, family stability is essential. A solid family comes from a good marriage. One of the most important aspects of a successful family is marital satisfaction (Greef, 2000). Marital satisfaction, according to Schoen et al. (2002), is a worldwide assessment of one's marriage's status, as well as a reflection of marital happiness & functioning. Marital satisfaction is just a conscious sensation of contentment and pleasure felt by a spouse while taking into account all elements of their marriage at the time (Chandrakanth, 2015). Marital contentment is a state of mind that reflects a person's perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages for marriage (Nadia & Shahid, 2012). Both men and women can be researched in terms of marital pleasure. Various research have shown that men and women have different levels of marital satisfaction (Tucker & Aron, 1993; Aron & Henkemeyer, 1995; Nadia & Shahid, 2012). In research by Rhyne (1981), Lee (1986), Zollar, and Williams, women were shown to have lower marital satisfaction than males (1987). Women are not only constrained in their participation in household tasks, childbirth, and nurturing with family attention and care (Adhikari, 2012). The number of women joining the labour market has increased dramatically in recent decades. It is widely acknowledged that working married women have significantly altered their home lives (Vaghela, 2014). Working women had greater marital adjustment than jobless women, according to several studies (Rani, 2013; Vaghela, 2014). In their study, Sahu and Singh (2014) found no significant differences in marital adjustment between working and non-working women. The study also revealed that owing to mutual trust, improved understanding, and sharing, both working and non-working women had a successful marital adjustment. Sinha (2016) observed that there is a substantial variation in marital adjustment owing to age but no difference in terms of work level in an Indian research, but Zainah et al. (2012) found that marital satisfaction varies between culture s. Previous research has found that demographic factors such as the number of children, degree of education, personal income, and the income of the spouse are major contributors to marital satisfaction (Pimental, 2000; Trudel, 2002; women in terms of several characteristics. Occupational status (working or non-working), family type (nuclear and joint), settlement location (urban and rural), age, education, occupation, personal income, number of children, are all aspects to consider. In the next part, the research methodologies and hypotheses generated for the study's objective are described, followed by the findings and discussion. The report finishes with the investigation's findings, limitations, and recommendations for further research.

The current study adopted the survey method, where questionnaire is used as the research instrument. The questionnaire consists of two sections which are section A and section B. In Section A, the demographic information of the respondents are asked. Section B consists of Marital Satisfaction Scale adapted from Roach et al. (1981) with 24 items to assess one‘s level of satisfaction towards her own marriage. Marital satisfaction is defined as an attitude of greater or lesser favorability towards one‘s own marital relationship and the items are designed to evoke affect or opinion rather than cognition. Response categories are along a 5 point Likert scale. Items had very high discrimination and the instrument had a reliability of 0.933 (cronbach alpha coefficient). Convenience sampling technique was used in this study. The data was collected from women in various localities in Melaka. Care was taken to ensure the important criteria for the research is met. These include women should be married and they can either be working or non-working. A total of 50 questionnaires were distributed to married women in jaipur.. The data obtained was analyzed using SPSS to test the following hypotheses: 1) Satisfaction differs significantly in terms of the place of settlement (urban or rural). 2) Marital satisfaction differs significantly with respect to the age. 3) Marital satisfaction differs significantly between working and non- working women 4) Marital satisfaction differs significantly between the women in joint and nuclear family. 5) Marital satisfaction differs significantly with respect to the education. 6) Marital satisfaction differs significantly with respect to the personal income. 7) Marital satisfaction differs significantly with respect to the number of children. differences in marital satisfaction in terms of occupational status (working or non-working), type of family (nuclear or joint) and place of settlement (urban or rural) of the married women. The results are presented in Table 1.

**significant at 0.01 level of significance. Results indicate that marital satisfaction differs significantly between working and non- working women. Thus, H1 is supported. Non-working women (mean = 4.32) are more satisfied in marriage than the working women. This ma y due to the fact that working married women have double burden of housework and job outside the home. Researchers reported working married women cannot properly adjust with their married life because they have many tasks to perform at a time (Hops et al., 1972). Working married women found themselves moving from job to job due to frequent changes of bosses. Could it be that reduced autonomy and an ever-increasing workload, combined with the added burden of having a small child at home, made their job's huge claim on time and emotional energy intolerable? That is why they cannot perform well at home (Hofferth, 1979; Hicks & Platt, 1969). However, women from joint and nuclear family enjoy equal marital satisfaction. Similarly, marital satisfaction does not differ significantly based on the place of settlement after marriage. One-Way ANOVA was used test the differences in marital satisfaction in terms of age, education, personal income, number of children. The results are shown in Table 2.

1 Age Below 20 21 – 30 31 – 40 41 and above

17 10 12 7 4.22 3.81 4.01 2.29 3.17 0.01**

2 Education Diploma Degree bachelor Degree Master PhD

12 18 6 8 3.27 3.03 2.01 2.88 2.99 0.00

3 Personal Income Less than 10000 10000-20000 20000-30000 30000-above

11 14 12 7 3.44 4.00 3.91 2.72 3.02 0.05*

4 Number of children None 1 2 3 More than 3

1 14 13 4 0.23 4.23 4.08 1.09 1.15 0.03

**significant at 0.01 level of significance. The findings show that marital happiness varies considerably by age, education, personal income, and the number of children. Hypotheses 4,5,6,7 are therefore supported. These parameters were subjected to post hoc testing to see which groups differed substantially. The group means show that women with a degree are happier than women without a degree. The marital satisfaction of the remaining pairings of groups is not statistically different. In general, this suggests that the better a woman's education, the happier she is in her marriage. This might be due to their self- assurance in themselves, which leads to a pleasant mood, which has a favorable influence on their marriage. Women in clerical jobs are much less satisfied with their marriages than women in semi-skilled and executive jobs. In comparison to semi-skilled and executive women, clerical women had lower marital satisfaction. This might be because a lower-level work does not provide women with the same sense of comfort as a higher- level one, and the overflow is most likely reflected in marital happiness. A possible reason is that a higher-level work confers a greater status and a larger compensation, all of which contribute to marital pleasure. The findings of this educational achievement and profession.

This study aims to investigate differences in marital satisfaction among women in Jaipur, India, based on demographic characteristics such as employment status (working or non-working), family type (nuclear or joint), settlement location (urban or rural), age, education, occupation, personal income, and number of children. According to the data, marital happiness varies greatly depending on occupational position, education, and employment. Women with greater employment standing, higher education levels, and higher positions had higher marital satisfaction. Similarly, women whose partners have greater education levels and occupy higher positions have higher marital happiness. Furthermore, the female Labour force plays a key role in the country's economic and social growth, emphasizing the critical need of focusing on working women.

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Associate Professor in Psychology, Department of Psychology, APEX University, Jaipur