Perceived stress among self - employed women

Perceived stress was assessed among one hundred self-employed women in Thiruvananthapuram and Ernakulam districts of Kerala using a structured questionnaire and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10). Inclusion criteria for the study was willingness to participate and availability during data collection. Confidentiality of the data provided by them were assured to the participants. The primary data collected was analysed descriptively and statistically verifying significance at p-value < 0.05. The results of the study revealed that the place of residence of 56 percent of self -employed women were rural. A significant 71 percent of them were aged between 31- 45 years and 43 percent had Post graduation as the highest educational status. Single ownership of the enterprise was noted in 84 percent of them and 26 percent were doing online business. Clothing boutique was the enterprise run by 22 percent of them. The time spent in the enterprise was reported as 6-10 hours by 43 percent of them. The problems faced in self- employment was reported as difficulty in accessing market (80 per cent) and building social networks to promote business (79 per cent). Various reasons were reported as the cause of stress with 62 percent reporting high workload. Perceived stress assessed using the instrument PSS-10 revealed that 52 percent of the self - employed women had moderate level stress.