RUNNING HEAD: A STUDY ON WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN WORKING WOMAN 1
A Study on Work-Life Balance in Working Women
Neha Verma
Ashu Mahaur
Harjit Kaur
Andeep Kumar
Navjot Singh Dhaliwal
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Professor Sandra Molendyk
December 15, 2016
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Table of Content
1. Abstract
2. Introduction
3. Literature review
4. Quantitate analysis
5. Qualitative analysis
6. Risk impact
7. Conclusion
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Abstract
The role of working women has different in the world due to economic conditions and
social demands. This has brought about a circumstance in which working women have
magnificent strain to build up a vocation as lively as their male partners while maintaining
dynamic engagement in individual life. The consistently expanding work weight is inflicting
significant damage on the working women abandoning them with less time for themselves. The
expanding obligations on the individual front with the innovative favors like propelled cell
phones, scratch pads that keep work life joined with individual life likewise makes weight on
individual and expert fronts in this enlightening age. This upsets the individual's physical,
enthusiastic and social prosperity. In this way, achieving the work-life balance is a needed for
working women to have a decent personal satisfaction. The different components influencing
the work-life balance of married working women have been seen in this report. The
information were subjected to illustrative measurements and it was discovered that the issues
looked by the working women regarding work-life balance are very high. The outcomes
likewise demonstrate that the work-life women of people influences their personal satisfaction.
Keywords: work-life balance, quality of life, working women, personal life, professional life.
A study on Work-Life Balance in Working Women
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A Study on Work-Life Balance in Working WomenAccording to Welford (2008),
women of early circumstances were for the most part limited to their kitchens and the
individuals who were utilized worked in industrial facilities, homesteads or shop works.
chance to advanced their education, and they may have relied on their fathers' or spouses'
dispositions towards women and work. The quick learning economy has given place for more
women to be educated. What's more, the instruction has engaged them as well as has given
them sound professions. Be that as it may, this has for sure turned into an extreme test for
women as they need to play out a considerable measure of obligations in home and office also.
As working women get hitched, they have extra obligations and when they move toward
becoming moms, they need to deal with the essential care of youngsters and more distant
family and are subsequently, under more noteworthy strain to proceed on a profession way. The
minding obligations that working moms have lays an overwhelming weight on them when it is
joined with their expert obligations. The exertion of working women to coordinate, compose
and adjust the different issues and exercises in their diverse parts all the while puts them under
gigantic weight. Accordingly, the family turns into an authoritative investor and this powerful
social pattern denoted the start of the work/life balance display move. As said by Welford
(2008), in his review comes about on work-life women in Hong Kong cites that there is an
alarmingly high level of respondents who feel that work is the reason for medical issues,
particularly stress and absence of activity. The medical issues are probably going to prompt
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lower profitability and viability of laborers (Welford, 2008),.
Literature Review
Marks (1996) stated that work-family adjust mirrors a person's bearing crosswise over
various life parts, a between part wonder. The significance of helping representatives
accomplish a harmony between the requests of their work and their home lives has been
accentuated. Numerous women today are wearing various caps in their endeavors to adjust
both profession and home/family duties. The stress over family can meddle with work, all
things considered, and stresses over work issues can likewise be shown on the family front.
Francene’s (1992) research comprising of representatives of 20 Fortune 500 organizations;
28% men, 53 % women reported that work-family push influenced their capacity to gather
at work consequently uncovering that the greater part the ladies and very nearly 33% of the
men announced that work/family stretch influenced their capacity to focus at work. Life at
work appears to be so troublesome for working women.ASSOCHAM's (cite)examination in
light of the review of 103 corporate female workers from 72 different
organizations/associations crosswise over 11 wide parts of the economy concentrated on the
issues of corporate female representatives. One critical discovery found by Ahmad (2009), is
that high mental activity requests like long working hours, working under due dates, without
clear course leads 75 percent of the working females to endure sadness or general tension issue
than those ladies with the most reduced level of mental employment requests. The Work-Life
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Balance Programs (WLBPs) created by Worker Amicable Associations may provide a decent
answer for take care of the issues of work-life adjust. Following the Thomas (1995), the
WLBPs have been found to build worker control after some time and work environment. The
motivation behind endeavoring hard both at home and work at the cost of her individual
wellbeing and prosperity for each wedded working lady is to have a decent personal
satisfaction. In any case, this personal satisfaction that she aches for is regularly impacted by
work-life adjust. Any awkwardness in the work and group of an individual can hamper the
personal satisfaction altogether for the person. Consequently Kofodimos (1993), proposed that
unevenness—specifically, work lopsidedness—stirs elevated amounts of stress, degrades the
personal satisfaction, and at last diminishes people's adequacy at work. Shaw (2003), proposed
that a similarly high speculation of time and inclusion in work and family would lessen
work-family strife and stress along these lines upgrading a person's personal satisfaction. Thus
it's implied that wedded working ladies of this period can have a solid personal satisfaction just
when work-life adjust is kept up influencing the subject of work-life to adjust for working
ladies, the need of great importance(cite).
Objectives

To study the occurrence of work-life balance issues among married working women.

To study the amount to which various factors like hours worked, work involvement and family
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responsibilities, affect married working women’s work-life balance.

To study the several factors that are distressing work-life balance influence the married working women
Academic, IT and Healthcare sectors.

To study the effect of work-life balance on the quality of life of married working women.
Research Methodology
Qualitative Analysis
According to (CITE), qualitative methods involves utilizing non-numerical ways to collect
and analyze data. For instance, this usually involved listening to a person’s story to collect
information, rather than utilizing questionaries.It
We utilized two different approaches in our analysis: the ix thinking hats analysis, and a SWOT
analysis
six thinking hats, and a SWOT analysis
Six Thinking Hats
“Six Thinking Hats” can help you to look at problems from different perspectives, but one at
a time, to avoid confusion from too many angles crowding your thinking. In general, it means
looking at a decision from all point of view it's also a powerful decision-checking technique in
group situations, as everyone explores the situation from each perspective at the same time
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(Cite). According to (CITE) the six thinking hats include looking at 6 ideas from the
following hat colors: blue, red… list here in order, across as a regular sentence:
Our
case
study
of
prevalence
of
work
life
life.
The career advancement: working women can enhance their knowledge and experience.
By attending seminars and courses at professional levels help in their career advancement.
Therefore, the success in their work role: balancing personal and professional life increases the
efficacy of work and makes women more successful and confident.
The threats arise when conditions in external environment jeopardize the reliability and
profitability of the organization’s business. They compound the vulnerability when they relate
to the weaknesses. The negative attitude of family members: sometimes women may have to
bind with the rules and regulations of husband’s and father’s mercy and cannot handle both
work and family. Furthermost, the extended family: extended family increase the
responsibilities of women and forced them to struggle and unable to perform perfectly. In
addition there are other responsibilities that increasis the stress level of women and health
problems.
Decision Tree Analysis
The decision tree analysis is a schematic representation of several decisions followed by
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different chances of the occurrence. Simply, a tree-shaped graphical representation of decisions
related to the investments and the chance points that help to investigate the possible outcomes
is called as a decision tree analysis. The decision tree shows Decision Points, represented by
squares, are the alternative actions along with the investment outlays that can be undertaken for
the experimentation. These decisions are followed by the chance points, represented by circles,
are the uncertain points, where the outcomes are dependent on the chance process. Thus, the
probability of occurrence is assigned to each chance point.
Using Decision tree as a tool for calculating Work-Life balance for working women. For
preparing a justified decision tree a set of a questionnaire is prepared based upon the Maslow's
hierarchy of needs as follow.
Physiological needs
Safety needs
Social belonging
Esteem
Self-actualization
1. Are you married?
2. Do you have children?
3. Are you able to give enough time to your children?
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4. Are you able to give enough time to your partner?
5. Are you relaxing and taking proper sleep?
6. Are you able to enjoy your hobbies?
7. Are you able to spare enough time for your social life and needs?
8. Are you able to practice your religion and spiritual needs?
9. Are you able to focus on your aim and ambitions in your life?
10. Do you think you would be happier if you were single?
11. Are you happy now?
Based upon the participants response to this questionnaire, the following decision tree was
prepared. Note: the green nodes depict….(the software won’t let me merge paragraphs)a
positive work-life balance for working women and every red node depicts an imbalance
between work-life balances.
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Quantitate Analysis
, Among the 180 married working women, a maximum number of defendants belonged to
the age group of 30-40 (38.9%). 65.0% had two children. The questionnaire had 20 items. It
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involves of ten statements about work-life balance where the options for answers were either
‘agree', sometimes' or ‘disagree'.
1. Percentage Analysis: Percentage analysis was done to check the response of the
respondents to the checklist
It is found that there is a strong prevalence of ‘A’ which signifies that work-life balance is
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out of regulator and is in need of attention. It also significances that the work-life balance
related statements except taking work home in most evenings suggests that working women
face the problems of work-life balance almost in every way in their daily life.
2. Mean and Standard Deviation:
3. The responses of the respondents to the statement “I am able to balance my
personal and professional life well” according to the sector they work in.
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According to the survey, the total 60 respondents of an Academic sector, 48 (80%) of
them feel that they are not able to balance their work and family life while only 12 (20%) of
them feel that they are able to. In addition, the total 60 respondents of Healthcare sector, 46
(76.7%) of them feel that they are not able to balance their work and family life while only 14
(23.3%) of them feel that they are able to. Furthermore, the total 60 respondents of IT sector, 54
(90%) of them feel that they are not able to balance their work and family life while only 6
(10%) of them feel that they are able to balance their personal and professional life.
Risk Management
According to Vaughn (2001), the risk is a situation in which there is a opportunity of an
adversative deviation from the desired product that is expected .The Risk Management process
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steps are a generic guide for any organization, regardless of the type of business, activity or
function.
The study was conducted among the married working women of Pondicherry. A sample
of 180 married working women was selected using Convenient Sampling. They were from
Academic, IT and Healthcare sectors. 60 women from each sector were chosen for the study.
Since the study focused only on married working women, all the 180 respondents were
married.
Identify the Risks and Analyze the Risks
Stress: Employees are pressurized by the superiors to deliver 100% result in their
respective jobs, in order to meet the dynamic market conditions. Thus, employees have no
other choice but to sacrifice their personal space. The entire process is creating stress on the
employees which are the root cause of many other problems.
Physical problem: both mental, as well as physical health of the women, is compromised,
leading to various health problems in women like mood swings, hypertension, the incidence of
diabetes and heart attacks have grown considerably in the past, several other problems like
cancer and abortions have also been reported.
Family problems: Family members of the employees are the one who gets affected the
most since employees are spending more time at work rather than at home, spouses, parents,
children are no longer given the time they deserve.
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Hangover: working for long hours at the office, increases employee interaction with the
outside world. The employees tend to stay in their professional world (mentally) though they
are at home and sometimes brings out the frustration of office at family members.
Unethical practices: to handle the stress, the employees tend to adopt Unethical practices
like boozing, smoking, drugs, improper relation etc. Also, there are chances that the employee
may resort to unfair means to get their work done ultimately by hook or crook.
Decreased performance: employees in the organization are never at peace. When they are
at workplace issues at home are a concern and vice-versa. Unknowingly, the employees get a
frustration and cannot give their best to their profession.
Organization in jeopardy: it all starts with stress and ultimately the employee ability and
performance is at crossroads. The output of the situation may be that the Organization may not
achieve its goals or the employee is no longer satisfied with the organization. In either case, the
entire organization is in jeopardy.
Evaluate
Understanding a company’s policies and views on work-life balance is important to your
success and happiness. You have the opportunity to discover what the flexibility and work-life
balance look like before you even begin a job by asking a few key questions:
1. What benefits are focused on work-life balance?
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2. Can you walk me through your typical work day?
3. What are your views on goals, timelines, and measuring success?
4. What’s the company policy on telecommuting?
5. How do you set employees up for success?
6. What is your work culture like?
7. What’s your mission statement?
8. How do you incorporate employee feedback into the day-to-day operations?
9. What are your interests outside of the office?
10. Do employees control the structure of their goals and tasks?
Treatment
• Exercise Access
• Childcare Services
• Company Outings
• Maintain Structural Consistency
• Offer Community Engagement Opportunities
• Create a Designated “Quiet Space”
• Allow Schedule Flexibility
• Engage in Team-Building Exercises
Summary of Findings
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This study was able to measure the work-life balance of working women finding that
married working women find it very hard to balance their work and personal life irrespective of
the sector they are into, the age group they belong to, the number of children they have and
their spouse's profession. The IT sector working professionals were found to have more
difficulties in balancing work and family followed by academic sector working women and the
health sector working women. Working hours related WLB problems were more for the IT
sector professionals while time to socialize or being relaxed is tough for working women of the
health sector. The married working women of all the sectors predominantly find it very hard to
steal out time for their own hobbies or leisure activities and maintain friendships or extended
relationships. The married working women in the age group of under 30 years were found to
have more work-life imbalance problems than those in the age group of 30 to 40 years while
married working women over 40 years were found to be balancing work-life slightly better
than the above-mentioned age groups. The respondents with spouse’s profession as Business
were found to be the ones suffering the most with work-life balance closely followed by the
spouse’s profession marketing. Our findings revealed the importance of work-life balance and
the need to have work-life balance to have happiness and life satisfaction.
Conclusion
With dual-career couples widely prevalent in this modern era, there is a need for
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systematic research into the nature of work-life conflict and further insight is required into
ways by which the work-home interface can be more effectively managed. Considerably more
research is needed to gain additional insight into the meaning and consequences of
work-family balance. This study was able to measure employees' work-life balance and found
weekly hours of work and the stress associated with work were very important determinants of
employees' work-life balance, alongside their occupations, age and caring responsibilities.
Conflicts in a work-life balance of working women affect their health who report more stress,
headaches, muscle tension, weight gain and depressed than their male counterparts.
Juggling between the obligations towards the families and expectations of the
organization and constant struggle to maintain a balance between work and family can have
serious implications on the life of an individual by affecting their well-being and overall
quality of life. There is a widespread demand from employees for the right to balance work and
home life in today’s busy world where finding time for oneself seems impossible. Health and
wellness programs can, for sure help working women in balancing their personal and
professional life. But they alone cannot be the answer to addressing the problems of imbalance.
The problems and difficulties of women are multi-dimensional as evident from the literature
reviewed; therefore, they require further probing to help working women in balancing their
work and family life.
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References
Ahmad, N. (2009). ASSOCHAM Business Barometer, ASSOCHAM Research Bureau.
Retrieved from http://www.assocham.org/arb/
Kofodimos, R. (1993). Balancing act. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Marks, S. (1996). Multiple roles and the self: A theory of role balance. Journal of Marriage
and the Family, 58, 417– 432.
Shaw, J. (2003). The relation between work–family balance and quality of life,
Journal of Vocational Behavior, 63, 510–53
Thomas, L. (1995). Impact of family-supportive work variables on work-family conflict
and strain: A control perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 6-15.
Francene, S. (1992). When the Business Case Is Common Sense: Coming to Terms
with America's Family Challenge. ACA Journal, 55, 221-227.
Welford, R. (2008). Work life balance in Hong Kong: Survey results. The University of
Hong Kong and CSR Asia, 22, 228-227.
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