Grit and Age at Career Resumption among Women Teachers Returning to Work after a Career Break in Tambaram, Chennai, India

Abstract

Background: Many Indian women take time off from their professional lives to care for family members. Once they return to the workforce, many experience difficulties in getting back into the swing of things. "Grit," which refers to persistence and passion for pursuing long term goals, is a non-cognitive attribute that is associated with continuing with education, employment, and other highly competitive environments; however, there are very few studies of grit in women who have returned to work after taking a leave of absence from their jobs. Objective: This research examined the level of grit in female teachers who returned to the classroom after having taken a break from teaching for at least one year. In addition, this research investigated whether or not there were differences in levels of grit based upon the age at which these teachers returned to the classroom. Method: This study used a cross sectional questionnaire survey to collect data on women teachers employed by schools/colleges in the Tambaram region of Chennai. (N = 53 (Provisional working value inferred from reported ANOVA degrees of freedom)). All participants completed a screening questionnaire (age and age at resuming work), as well as the eight item Short Grit Scale (Grit-S; Duckworth & Quinn, 2009). Data were analyzed using both descriptive statistics and a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) comparing resumption-age groups. Results: The majority of the participants scored in the upper quartile of the scale. There was no statistically significant difference in grit scores among the resumption-age groups, F(2, 50) = 0.63, p =.539, η² ≈.02. Conclusions: In this sample of teachers, grit scores were found to be relatively high, and there was no evidence that grit was related to the age at which women returned to work. As the design had no control group and the sample was small and drawn from only one profession, the results are descriptive and do not demonstrate that grit leads to successful re-entry into the workforce or that grit is equal across ages.

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