(a) Analyse the impact of gender based psychological construct, ‘Glass ceiling’, on women’s participation in Indian work force…

(a) Glass ceiling and women in the Indian workforce (15 marks)

The "glass ceiling" is an invisible but real barrier, built from attitudes and organisational practice, that keeps qualified women from rising beyond a certain level. The term entered wide use in 1986 and was studied by the US Glass Ceiling Commission (1991).

Psychological roots: gender stereotypes ("think manager, think male", Schein) and role congruity (Eagly and Karau), whereby leadership is judged as incompatible with the feminine role, so assertive women are penalised as unlikeable. Kanter's tokenism describes the pressure on the few women in senior ranks, while stereotype threat, impostor feelings and lowered self-efficacy erode aspiration. Women often absorb internalised gender roles, the double burden of paid work and care, and the "glass cliff" (Ryan and Haslam), by which women get risky leadership posts. Exclusion from male-dominated informal networks and weak mentoring block sponsorship.

Impact in India: women's labour force participation rate is low by global standards, although PLFS has shown a rise to about 41% in 2023-24, largely from rural self-employment and unpaid family work. Women are concentrated in low-paid and informal jobs ("sticky floor"), the leaky pipeline loses mid-career women at marriage and motherhood, and they are under-represented in senior management and boards, with a persistent gender pay gap. The costs are lost talent, lower aspiration and psychological strain.

Remedies: mentoring and sponsorship; gender-neutral selection; flexible work and childcare; the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act 2017 (26 weeks) and crèche norms; the POSH Act 2013; and the Companies Act 2013 requirement of at least one woman director in specified companies.

(b) How consumer rights and awareness shape consumer behaviour (15 marks)

Consumer rights under the Consumer Protection Act 2019 are the rights to safety, to be informed, to choose, to be heard, to seek redress and to consumer education. Awareness is knowledge of these rights, of product information and of redress channels such as the CCPA and consumer commissions.

Effects on behaviour: awareness moves buying from impulsive, heuristic choice to informed decision-making; consumers read labels, compare prices and quality, check standards marks (BIS, Agmark, FSSAI) and demand bills. Knowledge of persuasion tactics (the persuasion knowledge model of Friestad and Wright) makes people more sceptical of advertising, misleading claims and dark patterns. Perceived control and self-efficacy rise, so consumers are more likely to complain rather than suffer silently (Hirschman's exit-voice-loyalty), to seek redress and to switch brands after poor service. Trust increases when rights are enforced, which encourages e-commerce and formal-market participation. It also makes purchasing more sustainable and ethical, and pressures firms towards better quality, safety and honest advertising, as a market feedback loop. Unaware consumers, by contrast, are more susceptible to fraud, peer pressure and false claims. Limits include attitude-behaviour gaps and the cost and delay of redress.

(c) Impact of television and digital media on behaviour, values and cognition (20 marks)

Behaviour: Bandura's Bobo-doll studies showed that children imitate filmed aggression, and longitudinal work (Huesmann) links early violent viewing to later aggression; Williams's Notel study found aggression rose after television arrived in a Canadian town. Meta-analyses of violent video games (Anderson and Bushman) find small effects on aggressive cognition and behaviour, contested by others (Ferguson). Media can equally model prosocial behaviour: Sesame Street improved school readiness, and the Indian serial Hum Log (1984) shifted attitudes on gender and family planning, an entertainment-education success (Singhal and Rogers). Social media adds social comparison, cyberbullying and compulsive use.

Values: Gerbner's cultivation theory says heavy viewers come to see the world as more violent and dangerous (mean-world syndrome), and media promote consumerism, materialism and gender and body-image stereotypes; they can also spread tolerance and awareness. Algorithmic feeds and echo chambers polarise attitudes and spread misinformation.

Cognition: heavy screen time in early childhood is associated with delayed language and attention difficulties (the video deficit effect), shallow processing and reduced deep reading; multitasking weakens memory, but interactive educational media and games can improve visuospatial skills and learning.

Critical evaluation: most evidence is correlational, so causation may be reverse (aggressive children choose violent media) or driven by third factors such as family; effects are generally small and moderated by age, content, duration, parental mediation and media literacy; uses-and-gratifications theory stresses active audiences. Balanced conclusion: media are neither uniformly harmful nor benign, and quality, context and literacy determine impact.