Self-esteem in Indian Women: The Role of Employment Status and Emotional Intelligence

Self-esteem is a core construct within the framework of women empowerment. The present study was designed to investigate the role of employment status and emotional intelligence (EI) in self-esteem of Indian women. It was expected that the delineation of the predictive role of these two variablesfor self-esteem would be helpful forfuture intervention programs. The study adopted a 2 (employed versus unemployed) x 2 (low EI versus high EI) factorial design where employed and unemployed women were separately divided into low EI and high EI subgroups on the basis of median split of EI scores. Apart from the test of EI, all the participants were individually administered a standardised test of self-esteem. The analysis of variance supported both the hypotheses. Employed women exhibited higher self-esteem than unemployed women. Women with high EI showed greater self-esteem than women with low EI. The findings were explained in terms of the contemporary theories of self-esteem and interventions were suggested for women empowerment