Comparative study on Self-Esteem of Working and Non-working Women in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Background: Even though the frequency of self-esteem is documented globally, however, the level of self-esteem and its contributing factors varies across the world and could be unique when we are talking about Pakistan due to unique local cultural and social beliefs. Objective: To compare the self-esteem level among working and non-working women in selected organizations of Peshawar, Pakistan. Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted in selected areas (University Town and Hayatabad) Peshawar during 2018. Data was collected using Rosenberg's self-esteem scale (RSES). A total of 150 research participants (75 working and 75 were non-working each), were selected from the different institutes of Hayatabad and University Town. Analysis was carried out through SPSS-20. Chi-square test was used for comparing the frequency while t-test was used for comparing the mean considering a p-value ≤0.05 as significant. Results: A total of 150 subjects with a mean age of 33.9±6.9 years (range 25-50 years) participated in the study. The self-esteem of the overall subjects revealed a mean score of 17.9±5.4 (ranged from 1 to 28). The prevalence of low self-esteem was 42 (28%), out of whom 40 (26.7%) accounted in non-working women and only 2 (1.3%) were found in working women (p=0.001). Furthermore, 5 (3.3%) were found with high self-esteem levels out of whom 4 (2.7%) were from working women and only 1 (0.7%) were from non-working ( p=0.0001). Conclusion: It is concluded that a higher proportion of non-working women have low self-esteem as compared to working women, indicating that the alternate hypothesis was true i.e. self-esteem of working women is higher as compared to non-working women.