Impact of Sexual Satisfaction and Body Image among Married Women
ABSTRACT ::
The study was designed to investigate the impact of sexual satisfaction and body image among married women. The sample consisted of 120 married women randomly selected from Rajkot city. Walter w. Hudson, Herison and Croscup's Index of Sexual Satisfaction and Dean Jade's Body Image Scale were administered to the selected respondents. Result revealed that working status and menopausal state had no significant impact on sexual satisfaction among married women. Furthermore, working status had no significant impact on body image among married women. However, menopausal state had significant impact on body image among married women. Pre-menopausal women feel great satisfaction with her body than peri-menopausal women.
Introduction : -
Marital bliss is an experience that is subjective and highly individualistic. Yet, every married individual yearns for it. This is largely because it is the major index of successful marriage. With the motive of continuing the human race as well as to fulfill the physical needs of human, such as satisfaction, sexuality, sexual activity, sexual life holds a unique place in human life. The existence, future and the progress of the society depend on the balance between the sexual satisfaction and marital relationship.
The foundation to happy married life lies in sexual satisfaction (English, 1967). Stone and Stone (1999) found that the couple that possesses sexual dissatisfaction rarely gets prosperity in married life. Cochin (1999) opines that in dissatisfied sexual relationship, there arises problems in married life.
In fact, maintenance of marital happiness and satisfaction is affected by one's preparedness for marriage. It requires both the partners to be physically fit, emotionally healthy and social culturally ready. Mental preparedness includes knowledge and attitude towards marriage and awareness regarding sexual behavior. Emotional preparedness helps to appreciate the spouse and accept their new roles, relations and responsibilities in family setup. Prepared partners are not caught unaware. More they are prepared, better the success chances in their marriage.
Marital happiness and sexual satisfaction are closely interwoven with each other and a host of factors have influence on them. Moreover they all posses the characteristics of dynamism that indicates continuous changes during life course. Social class, caste, culture, tradition, value, education, personality traits, physical attractiveness and wellness, age, interest, motives etc. are all important factors which may exert profound impact on marital and sexual satisfaction of a married couple.
The main form of sexuality is biological. But the sexual satisfaction of human does not be alone in biological factors. Psychological factors play a great role in the sexual life of human. Sexual satisfaction is an effective response arising from one's subjective evaluation of the positive and negative dimensions like quality of the relationship, sexual activity, social learning, good and bad previous experiences, fantasies fears, stress are all associated with one's sexual relationship.
In early times, entering into forties, woman withdraw slowly and slowly their attention from worldly activities and pay their attention in the devotion of the God but now radical change has come in the society. Now women have become conscious about their appearance and they want to enjoy the full pleasure of life. Now a days, most of the woman, especially in urban areas like and even try to appear many years younger than their age, with their growing age, by taking balanced food, doing proper exercise and by taking care of their beauty At one side, there has come a change in women's beliefs about appearance, dress, life style, health and sexual life as well as traditional feminine attitude At the other side great changes have also come in men in their choices, hobby, life style and traditional values and beliefs. Therefore in today's age, specially in married woman, the subject of ' Body Image ' is become worrisome. She continuously tries to remain attractive for her husband. Because of unattractive body figure and because of having improper weight, many of them feel disappointment and fear of not satisfying husband's desire.
Body image is a psychological construct which refers to self-perception including self-image and feelings an individual perceives about his or her body. Body image is a multidimensional self attitude towards ones body, particularly its size, shape and aesthetics. It refers to person's evaluation and affective experience regarding their physical attributes as well as their investments in appearance as a domain for self-evaluation.
With the view of changing life style, values and attitudes of both men and women in modern time, it is very essential to know about certain crucial matters of married woman like sexual satisfaction and body image. The present investigation was carried out to study the impact of several factors like working status and menopausal state on sexual satisfaction and body image among married women.
Method :-
Sample:-
The respondents of the present study were 120 married women randomly selected from Rajkot city. By using randomized method, total 60 working women and 60 non-working women were selected for sample. In both the groups working and non-working 30 women having stage of Pre-menopause and 30 women having stage of Peri-menopause were selected. Thus, the whole sample comprised of 120 women with equal number of working and non-working women.
Tools :-
The following tools were used in the present study :
Procedure:-
Personal data sheet was prepared to collect some personal information about weight, height, working status, economic status, beauty care, menopausal state etc.
Gujarati version of sexual satisfaction scale constructed by Walter W. Hudson, Herison and Croscup (1981) was used to collect information. It consists of 25 statements with seven point scale having response range from ' none of the time ' to " all of the time." The scale has both negative and positive statements. For item no. 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 11, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 24 and 25 scoring has to be done in the order of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and for item no. 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 22 and 23 the scoring has to be done in reverse order. The minimum and maximum score ranges of between 25 and 175. Low score of respondents indicates less sexual satisfaction and high score indicates higher sexual satisfaction.
The authors of this scale have reported internal reliability of 0.96 and have reported high face and content validity.
Translated Gujarati version of body image scale constructed by Deanne Jade (1998) was used to collect information about body affection. The scale consists of 18 statements with four alternative responses like, 'always', 'many times', 'some times', and 'never', and are to be scored as 4, 3, 2, 1 respectively. Low score on the scale indicates higher level of satisfaction about body image and high score indicates higher level of dissatisfaction with body image. The author of this scale reported satisfactory level of reliability and validity.
Above mentioned devices were administered to all the selected working and non-working married women. Scoring was carried out as per the manuals. To compare the mean scores of sexual satisfaction and body image with reference to working status and menopausal state.
Results:-
The purpose of present study was to investigate the impact of sexual satisfaction and body image among working and non-working women having pre and peri menopausal state. Then One Way ANOVA was applied to find out the significance of mean difference. The results obtained are presented in Table- 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Table-1
Means of sexual satisfaction and body image with reference to working status and menopausal state ( N = 120)
Table-1 displays the means or sexual satisfaction and body image with reference to working status and menopausal state.
Table-2
ANOVA summary of sexual satisfaction with reference to working status ( N = 120)
Table-3
ANOVA summary of sexual satisfaction with reference to menopausal state ( N = 120)
Table-2 and 3 displays the F-Value of sexual satisfaction with reference to working status and menopausal state. Table-4 and 5 displays the F-Value of body image with reference to working status and meno pausal state.
Table-4
ANOVA summary of body image with reference to working status ( N = 120)
Table-5
ANOVA summary of body image with reference to menopausal state ( N = 120)
The results clearly revealed that working women experienced sexual dissatisfaction than non-working women. Moreover, peri meno pausal women feels sexual satisfaction than pre menopausal women. However, working and non-working women having the pre and peri menopausal stage did not significantly differ on sexual satisfaction. Further more, non-working women experienced dissatisfaction with her body than working women. Yet working and non-working women did not significantly differ on body image. Moreover, Pre menopausal women feels satisfaction with her body than Peri menopausal women. However, the pre and peri menopausal women significantly differ on body image.
Discussion :-
The results of the present study clearly show that when F-test was applied to check the effect of working status on sexual satisfaction no significant difference was found. The F-value (Table-2) is 1.23 which is insignificant. Table-1 reveals that the mean scores of sexual satisfaction of working and non-working women are 140.15 and 143.47 respectively and the difference of mean (3.32) is remarkable yet the difference of mean score is not statistically significant. It was concluded that there was not any significant difference between working and non-working women on sexual satisfaction. The longitudinal study of Hyde et. al (1996) support result of the present study.
Furthermore, result of the present study express that when F-test was applied to check the differences on sexual satisfaction of pre and peri menopausal state no significant difference was found. The F-value (Table-3) is 0.39 which is statistically insignificant. Table-1 reveals that the mean scores of sexual satisfaction of pre and peri menopausal women are 140.87 and 142.75 respectively and the difference of means (2.12) are remarkable yet they are not statistically significant. It was concluded that menopausal state of women did not have any impact on sexual satisfaction. Hartmanns et. al (2004) study support result of the present study. Deeks and Mc Cabes (2001) study contradicts result of the present study. Katherine and Sharons (2005), Leiblums et. al (2006) study support result of the present study.
Furthermore, result of the present study express that when F-test was applied to check the differences on body image of working and non-working women no significant difference was found. The F-value (Table-4) is 3.28 which is insignificant. Table-1 reveals that the mean scores of body image of working and non-working women are 32.52 and 35.68 respectively and the difference of mean (3.16) is remarkable yet the difference of mean score is not significant. It was concluded that there was not any significant difference between working and non-working women on body image.
Moreover, result of the present study reveals that when F-test was applied to examine the impact of menopause state on body image significant impact was found. The F-value (Table-5) is 5.70 which is significant at 0.05 level. Table-1 reveals that the mean scores of body image of Pre and Peri menopausal women are 32.03 and 36.17 respectively and the difference of means (4.14) are remarkable. It was concluded that there was a significant difference in body image of women having different menopausal state. Pre menopausal women were exhibiting high satisfaction with their body than the peri menopausal women. The probable reason for this difference could be that women who are in a stage of pre menopause, the join the health club, health center, gym, meditation and yoga to maintain her body and figure. While peri menopausal women due to hormonal changes, depression, frustration and emotional-mental stress did not take sufficient interest in any type of activities to maintain body figure.
Conclusion:-
On the basis of above findings it may be concluded that working status and menopausal state had impact on sexual satisfaction and body image among married women. The result of the study have great implication for the maintain evergreen marital life and feel greater sexual satisfaction because developing the proper healthy thinking about sex also helps women to increase sexual satisfaction. Moreover, positive body image also enhanced self-esteem, decreased social anxiety and alleviated some depressive symptoms, so that the husband-wife both feel sexual satisfaction.
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Thakar Megha K.
( M.A., M.Phil.)
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