Working married women have higher emotional intelligence than working men

Islamabad: Working married women have higher emotional intelligence, multitasking skills and abilities, egalitarian gender role attitudes, and marital adjustment as compared to the married employed men, and housewives in Pakistan.

The interesting findings were presented during a PhD defense successfully conducted by researcher Dr. Saima Kalsoom in National Institute of Psychology (NIP) Center of Excellence, Quaid-I-Azam (QAU) University. Dr. Saima’s area of specialization was social and gender psychology. Her PhD was supervised by Prof. Dr. Anila Kamal, one of the eminent professors of psychology in Pakistan.

The data for PhD dissertation titled “Multitasking, Gender Role Attitudes, Emotional Intelligence, and Marital adjustment of Married Men and Women” was taken from 1080 married individuals (men and women) from the major cities of Pakistan and participants were diverse in terms of their demographic and ethnic background.

Through the associations of emotional intelligence, multitasking preferences, perceived multitasking ability, egalitarian gender role attitudes, and marital adjustment, Dr. Kalsoom has suggested various policy guidelines and implications for social scientist to device an indigenous policy for gender as a human and social capital.

It has inferred from the outcomes of the research that egalitarian gender role attitudes and multitasking interact with emotional intelligence in order to experience better patterns of marital adjustment by married working individuals both men and women. Therefore, human resource managers can design intervention strategies and modules to work for employees facing challenges regarding emotional problems and training on multitasking skills/abilities can also be beneficial. Which in turns would aid for the adjustment in marital relations and as a spillover effect, it can foster the individuals, organisational, and societal wellbeing in general.

The research suggests that in this regard, to bring change in the traditional patriarchal ideologies and attitudes, organisational training on gender and gender role attitudes is crucial in Pakistan. She suggested that organizations should hold trainings for their employees to attain better emotional intelligence and to improve multitasking skills. Further, she recommended awareness seminars and training sessions about modern gender role attitudes, which means both men and women can perform any role (domestic unpaid or paid employment).

The research also terms it important to introduce the concepts of gender role, gender diversity, sensitivity, and gender role attitudes in the curriculum at different levels of education (primary, middle, and higher secondary) in the country.

Overall, from the results of her PhD research, Dr. Kalsoom has concluded that higher emotional intelligence is important for higher/better multitasking skills and marital adjustment of married individuals (men and women) in the socio-cultural context of Pakistan. Dr. Kalsoom is currently serving in National Defence University (NDU), Islamabad.