Women’s Invisible Labor and Emotional Stress in Coastal Households
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54536/ajywe.v5i2.8196Keywords:
Climate Change, Coastal Households Vulnerability, Emotional Stress, Unpaid Labor Work, Women’s Invisible LaborAbstract
In Bangladesh, where women are the primary providers of domestic, caregiving and livelihood support yet challenged by climate vulnerability in coastal areas, women’s invisible labor has historically been a fundamentally important but largely unseen feature for household and community well-being. To explore the interplay between women’s invisible labor and emotional stress, and with an eye on the coastal household vulnerability context. The specific objective was to measure and analyze the effect of coastal household vulnerability on this relationship. The study was quantitative, cross-sectional in nature, where data were collected from 400 women of selected coastal districts of Bangladesh by a structured questionnaire using a five-point Likert scale. The sample size calculated based on Cochran’s formula, and the collected data were analyzed by SPSS using descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis. Women showed remarkably high invisible labor, especially over unpaid household work followed by care and livelihood-support activities. High prevalence rates of emotional stress characterized a slightly different pattern: emotional exhaust, financial distress, family responsibilities and lack of recognition. Research has also shown that cyclones, salinity intrusion, water scarcity, and disruptions to livelihoods due to climate change add significantly to the unpaid work burden of women while also contributing heavily to their emotional labor. The study found that invisible labor, emotional distress and coastal household vulnerability were significantly linked together while it also recommended the implementation of policies addressing gender-responsiveness, provision of psychosocial support services and climate-responsive resilient development programs to strengthen women’s well-being as well as household resilience in Bangladesh’s coastal areas.
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