We are pleased to invite you to our Weekly Research Seminar Series on Thursday, 9th December at 3pm. In this week seminar, we are pleased to have our colleagues, Dr. Anita Kashi, Dr. Lynda Hyland, and Prof. Ajit Karnik, presenting their research on “Psychological outcomes of objective and subjective perceptions of division of labour in household work".

Click here to join the meeting

Weekly Research Seminar Series

We are pleased to invite you to our Weekly Research Seminar. It will be held online on 9th December from 3pm via Microsoft team platform. Weekly Research Seminar Series was launched in 2008 and has featured 300 presentations to date. The seminars provide a forum for researchers to share their work. Presenters include faculty from Middlesex University Dubai and other universities in the United Arab Emirates, as well as researchers from other global institutions.

“Psychological outcomes of objective and subjective perceptions of division of labour in household work"

Anita Kashi, Lynda Hyland & Ajit Karnik

Abstract

It has been estimated that unpaid care and domestic work contributes between 10% and 39% of GDP. Such work includes cooking, cleaning, fetching water and caring for the young and the elderly. Unfortunately, standard measurement of GDP is blind to unpaid work. Since a disproportionate amount of unpaid work is done by women, this neglect of unpaid work discriminates against women. The lacunae in the concept of GDP have been known to have a much wider impact on “…marital quality, kin relations, interpersonal power, symbolic exchange, social comparison,…”. Issues of perceived fairness in the division of work between men and women have assumed a lot of importance and these go beyond the objective division of work. This research seeks to investigate whether subjective perception of fairness and objective division of labour in household work predict life satisfaction, well-being, and self-esteem. We plan to test three hypotheses:

a) Objective division of household work will significantly predict life satisfaction, well-being, and self-esteem

b) Subjective perception of fairness in the division of household work will significantly positively predict life satisfaction, well-being, and self-esteem

c) Subjective perception of fairness and objective division of labour in household work will vary as per the age, education (self/spouse), employment status (self/spouse), type of family (nuclear/joint), household help, and mode of travel to work.

For our data, we aim to administer our survey to 500+ married male and female participants of different nationalities currently living in the UAE.

Presenter Bios

Dr. Anita Shrivastava, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor, and Head in Psychology. She is a life member of Indian Association of Clinical Psychologists (IACP), with more than twenty-five years of clinical, teaching, and research experience in Ethiopia, Eritrea, India, and the UAE. She is Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy UK (SEHEA). She has presented her research papers in national and international conferences, and has won best research paper award in ICAP, 2017, Colombo, Sri Lanka. She publishes in peer reviewed national and international journals. Her research interests are highly diversified, and include positive psychology interventions and trait research, social and community aspects of mental health, adaptive maladaptive humor, body image correlates among young, mortality salience and materialism, and schizotypy among adults and children. Her current ongoing projects are: cohort trends towards help-seeking among young adults; psychological well-being and humor styles; psychological correlates of cosmetic surgery among middle aged Arabs. Moreover, she is involved in an international collaborative project on “Psychological well-being and nature exposure”.

Dr. Lynda Hyland is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Middlesex University Dubai. A chartered member of the British Psychological Society and a member of the American Psychological Association, Lynda holds an M.Sc. in Health Psychology from University College London, and a Ph.D. in Science (Psychology) from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her research interests include social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties in childhood, student wellbeing and performance, health inequalities, and chronic illness management.

Professor Ajit Karnik is a Professor of Economics at Middlesex University Dubai. He completed his MA and PhD in Economics at the University of Bombay, India. He was previously Professor of Political Economy before assuming the role of Director of the Department of Economics at the University of Mumbai and served as Professor of Economics at the University of Wollongong in Dubai. His has been Indo-American Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin (USA), Overseas Visiting Fellow at St John’s College (Cambridge University, UK), Fulbright Scholar at the Haas Business School, University of California at Berkeley (USA) and Smuts Fellow at Wolfson College (Cambridge University, UK). His research interests include public economics, political economy and applied econometrics.

MDX Dubai Seminar Series-2021

UPCOMING EVENTS