1Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Rabindranath Tagore Centre for Human Development Studies, Kolkata, West Bengal, India
2ICSSR Doctoral Fellow at Department of Social Work, Pondicherry University, Puducherry, India
*Corresponding author: justinpallickaljose@gmail.com
Online published on 22 March, 2019.
We examined identity induced psychosocial disability and social exclusion among 601 tribal women, recruited using multi-stage cluster sampling. The standardized were used to measure the variables of interest. The result showed that tribal identity, stigma, discrimination, social integration, conflicts in social relations, self-esteem and quality of social life have significantly differed between married and unwed mothers. Identity, stigma, discrimination, social integration, conflicts in social relations, self-esteem and quality of social life were significantly varied across different marital groups such as married, unwed mothers and widows. The study concludes that tribal communities exert and maintain control over unwed mothers through stigmatization and discrimination for social system maintenance. The tribal groups were collectively ill represented and they experienced significant level of psychosocial disability.
Identity, stigma, discrimination, psychosocial disability, quality of social life
