Work-Life Balance on Employed Women

Introduction

Work-life balance acts as a fundamental workplace reform to develop a healthy work environment that allows individuals to balance personal contentment and work demands to attain a happy life. Consequently, work-life balance in employed women permits them to accomplish their work tasks while also attending family and personal commitments. This generates significant control over job demands to engage in other roles (Garg & Dawra, 2017). The paper provides an understanding of work-life balance on employed women, workforce changes that impacted working women, the importance of comprehending work-life balance in female employees, and a detailed analysis of the research process.

A Basic Understanding of Work-Life Balance on Employed Women

The growth of employed women has contributed significantly to the economy by helping in increasing the gross domestic product levels. However, the female employees require enough time to participate in other roles within the society and avoid unnecessary pressure in achieving their anticipated goals. The conflict between work and family among female employees has been due to the cultural contradictions related to motherhood (Garg & Dawra, 2017). Organizations should focus on creating a rational balance between women’s personal and professional life to live quality lives.

Changes in the Workforce that Impacted Working Women

The work-life balance began following the increased number of female employees in the workplace to create gender equality and permit them to attend family matters. The growth of family instability and single parents also created the need to enable female employees to attend to family issues to improve their wellbeing. Additionally, the increase in the aging population that needs care and support also forced organizations to consider introducing a work-life balance (Garg & Dawra, 2017). Lastly, adopting nonstandard work hours and part-time work has been crucial in supporting work-life balance.

Importance of Understanding Work-Life Balance for Employed Women

Understanding work-life balance, particularly for employed women, is crucial as it helps to live quality lives and improve the overall welfare. Work-life balance helps employed women to overcome occupational stress and burnout as it allows them to overcome parental demands and avoid working for too long hours. This helps them avert hypertension, mental problems, fatigue, and mood swings, thus living a healthy life. Additionally, work-life balance yields greater job satisfaction, which reduces absenteeism and encourages retention (Gragnano Simbula & Miglioretti, 2020). The balance generates proper parenting to help children attain their aspirations and supports the establishment of strong families.

Research Questions and Research Objective

Studies have shown that having a work-life balance is the most challenging issue faced by employees and employers. More so, work-life conflicts are more visible with employed women when work-life policies are limited. My research objective is to study and describe the overall work-life balance with employed women in different levels of positions. Also, to gain their perspective and demonstrate the impact of work-life balance on their personal and professional lives. Furthermore, I will be exploring research questions such as how does work-life balance affects employed women’s personal life and professional life? Also, does an imbalance of work-life balance induce occupational stress and burnout?

Research Design

My study will incorporate randomly selected female workers at Pennsylvania State University. These employed women work in Human Resource, Student Affair IT, Bryce Jordan Center administration, and Auxiliary Hospitality Services. The primary methodology that will be used in this study is a questionnaire and secondary source analysis. The questionnaire establishes statements of work-life balance, statements about personal life, and statements about professional life, with a scale ranking of strongly agree to disagree strongly.

Questionnaire for the Survey-Based Study

The five questions from the questionnaire that are related to the research questions are as revealed below.

• I overstay at work.
  • Strongly agree.
  • Agree (13).
  • Neutral (4).
  • Disagree (3).
  • Strongly Disagree.
• It is difficult for me to find time for me.
  • Strongly agree (12).
  • Agree (4).
  • Neutral (4).
  • Disagree.
  • Strongly Disagree.
• I believe that work-life balance is associated with job satisfaction.
  • Strongly agree (16).
  • Agree (4).
  • Neutral.
  • Disagree.
  • Strongly Disagree.
• Level of balance between work life and home life:
  • Very well balanced.
  • Somewhat balanced.
  • Balanced (6).
  • Somewhat out of Balanced (10).
  • Very out of balance (4).
• I always feel stressed of balancing work-life:
  • Strongly agree (5).
  • Agree (11).
  • Neutral.
  • Disagree (4).
  • Strongly Disagree.

Explaining the Findings

The questions provide the reality and impact of work-life balance on employed women. Based on the questions, most employed women tend to overstay at work, thus leading to burnout and inability to attend to family issues. Most employed women find it challenging to find time for themselves, a situation that adversely affects their personal life. Many women believe that work-life balance generates job satisfaction forcing them to focus on accomplishing their tasks. However, most women employees hold that their organizations do not provide a good balance between work life and home life, making it hard to live a quality life (Gragnano et al., 2020). Additionally, balancing work-life generates stress to women employees because most organizations do not recognize the need to allow employees to attend to other roles in the community.

Conclusion

Work-life balance for employed women is crucial as it supports a healthy workplace and quality living. Most female employees overstay in the workplace and find it hard to balance work and family life leading to burnout and occupational stress. Work-life balance is capable of increasing job satisfaction to enhance retention and augment focus on task execution. Therefore, organizations should consider providing an excellent work-life balance for female workers to attain increased output and help the employees live healthy lives and attend family tasks.

References

Garg, M., & Dawra, S. (2017). Work life balance and women employees. International Journal of Applied Business and Economic Research, 15(22), 233-246.

Gragnano, A., Simbula, S., & Miglioretti, M. (2020). Work–life balance: Weighing the importance of work–family and work–health balance. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(3), 1-20.