SAFA: New survey to help married working women
Founder: Ameena Mustapha
For Ameena Mustapha and her team at the SAFA Counselling Centre in Dehiwela, it was one more step towards better mental health care for women when they conducted, last month, a mental wellbeing survey of married working women in Colombo and the suburbs.
The online survey was done with 68 women and the findings, given in graphs, can help in addressing the problems women face at home and work.
We meet the team at their cosy sanctum in Nugegoda, a haven for not only Muslim women but those from all communities, though really a wing of the Sri Lanka Muslim Women’s Conference Hall.
Counsellor: Mariyam Bint Farman. Pix by Dilushi Wijesinghe
The SAFA centre was the brainchild of Ameena Mustapha, who used to lecture under the legendary Fr. Mervyn Fernando at his Family Studies and Services Institute. After moving to London when her husband went there as the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in the UK, she resolved to set up a counselling
centre on their return.
The centre began in 2017 with preparation for marriage courses for Muslim women, to give hope to couples before their ‘happily ever after’ with the Christian syllabuses altered. The response was overwhelmingly positive and they began courses in Tamil alongside the English ones. Today, eight years on, SAFA has come a long way with many a seminar and workshop, from anger management to ‘happy exams’, leading the way to the research study. They have been able to reach out to outstations including Kandy, Puttalam, Mawanella, and Kahatowita and also to undergraduates.
They aimed from the start to spread the word that mental illnesses can be treated just like any physical ailment.
As 2024 aligns with a global mental health theme, SAFA specifically targeted women, recognising their significant role in multitasking daily activities and balancing business and work life. The findings of last month’s survey which was anonymous were quite eye-opening. 64% of the women surveyed reported positive mental wellbeing across five dimensions (physical, social, emotional, psychological and spiritual) but fell short in the three sub-segments of social engagement, stress management, and exercise routine.
The study also found that that “the spousal relationship of working women becomes strained with the arrival of the first child; however, there is a nearly complete recovery after the birth of the second or third child”.
Somewhat insidious is the finding that “as income levels rise among married working women, there is a significant dip in the spousal relationship; the least affected area is the acknowledgement that both partners fulfil their basic responsibilities to the family. Nevertheless the quality of their personal relationship has undergone great stress among a large community of the higher earning working women.”
Following these findings SAFA aims to prepare women for these situations with coping mechanisms, training through occupational counsellors and productivity coaches on how to balance their priorities. Says Mariyam Bint Farman, counsellor at the SAFA centre, “We would (also) like to let companies know what they can do for their (women) employees.”
Among steps they can take to support women staff are improving productivity culture and reducing late working hours and work on holidays; marriage counselling services, both preventive and reactive in order to improve the harmony in the home environment; inculcating healthy family practices; initiatives to bring in an exercise routine in their lives; drawing the husbands into specific HR programmes to make them feel part of the company and to witness the contribution by their spouse and instituting a practice of family holidays at least once a year.
Mariyam adds that women’s organisations both private and public need to conduct more detailed research to understand the reasons for the above. “It’s important to do observational explorations and double blinded experiments to unravel the real problems of this hidden dynamic which is generally removed from the media portrayal of the successful career woman.”
That two out of three women enjoyed positive mental wellbeing came as a surprise, says Mariyam. “It was really nice to know,” she says, adding that their resilience was remarkable.
Adds Ameena, “As a counselling centre we have been highly successful, and our counsellors are highly qualified. The feedback has been good and we have foreign clients from the Middle East. We have a special entrance to the counselling room, so no one knows who comes and goes.”
This study was led by Farman Nizar along with SAFA’s Intelligence and Research Team – Mariyam Bint Farman, F.Rasna Ramis Sajeedh and Azra Begum Abdul Mannan.
For further information please contact the SAFA hotline – 0720115115, or email – safacounselling@gmail.com,
or see – https://safacounselling.com
SAFA is at 32/1B, S.D.S Jayasinghe Mawatha Kalubowila, Dehiwela
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