Length

 Length: Min 400 words to max 500-600 words
 Tone: Informative, persuasive and motivational, suitable for working professionals

 Target Audience: Managers and senior executives in organisations
Topic: Creating Work-Life balance

Topic Statement: A feminine perspective on work-life balance
1. Despite a steep increase in female representation in the workforce in the last decade, the
gendered division of labor in the family remains broadly unaltered.
E.g. Women, even who work for the same duration as their spouses in the office and
contribute equally or more to the financial status of the family, often take most of the shares
of childcare responsibility and domestic work.
2. “The glass ceiling effect” first coined by Marilyn Loden represents an intangible barrier that
obstructs certain individuals, particularly women and minorities, from ascending to higher
levels of leadership within an organization, leading to increased stress as they strive to
balance familial responsibilities with restricted career growth.
E.g. According to a 2019 McKinsey report, women are less likely to be promoted to
managerial positions, contributing to the gender gap in leadership across various industries.
3. Organizational culture profoundly impacts work-life and success, rooted in shared symbols
and beliefs. Despite efforts to increase female representation, transforming a masculine
culture proves challenging, making it difficult to shift deeply ingrained norms even with a
more diverse workforce.
Beyond The Glass Ceiling- unveiling women’s work-life expecations
Over the past few decades, massive changes in society and in the workplace have occurred. For
example, the participation of women in the workforce—while fulfilling family responsibilities—
and the growing heterogeneity of the workforce in general are now a fact, as is the rise in
teleworking or the habit of bringing work home. These changes have brought attention to the
need to address diversity management, as well as to the boundaries between employee work and
personal life. The study of gender differences, for example, is closely connected to the study of
work–life balance, given the different gender-based social roles that women and men
stereotypically play according to collective ideals.
Despite changes in economic contribution and participation in the workforce, the division of
labor inside the family remains almost unchanged, and the traditionally feminine responsibilities
such as domestic works and childcare are still majorly being performed by women. After that,
women need to portray the feminine traits such as care, affection, and sometimes even
submissive; whereas in office, they need to show a dominant, manly character; this shift between
two opposite roles might be extremely distressing and conflicting for a woman. Needless to
mention, such every day struggles are detrimental to the ultimate balance one maintains between
family and workplace.
Motherhood is one of the biggest challenges for working women across professions since the
additional childcare responsibilities are generally not shared by the man of the family. Most
organizations offer long maternity leaves and some extent of flexibility, but working mothers
often face discrimination both on personal and professional levels in addition to the guilt that
comes with it. Work–life balance tends to be most challenging when different roles played by a
person tend to differ to a great extent. Since the “ideal worker” ideology and “ideal mother”
ideology do not match, the identity conflict faced by women employees is quite common.
Work–life conflict is often cited as a contributing factor to these issues since household and
childcare responsibilities might severely and negatively influence women’s career advancements.
Women are less satisfied with their career opportunities, with their job, and their work–life
balance in generally low compared to their male counterparts, who report higher job and life
satisfaction levels and lower work-related stress levels.
It would seem that work–life balance and career opportunities are inextricably linked, at least as
far as female workers are concerned. Usually, women have to work harder than men if they want
to reach higher positions (the so-called “glass ceiling” and “gender segregation”). In turn,
working harder would lead to an increased conflict between work and life, and in fact, accepting
a higher position very often leads to a lower work–life balance.
The issue of socio-cultural stereotype and entrenched prejudice against women is still a
prevailing concern across the globe. For example, a study in 2010 reveals that the women in
Arab society restrict their employment to their family and local environment due to their socio-
cultural norms. To avoid undermining the patriarchal structure of Arab society, women are
expected to forfeit their career advancement to benefit men’s career advancement.
A similar situation is experienced in India according to the research conducted by Mahapatra in
2018 shows that marriage, motherhood, living in a joint family and managing the
house have increased the social obligation of women. The Indian patriarchal system allows
women to interact with the larger circle of friends and family. Women should pay good attention
to in-laws and relatives of the husband. More than 90% of the participants say that their career is
affected due to the added social roles, thus facing the issue of work-life balance.
Imbalance in work-life of a working woman is caused due to role overload in family life and role
interference in work life. A working woman is burdened with the responsibility of managing
family matters, child care, elderly care and other mundane household work. To add to this, she is
also expected to fulfill many social obligations like entertaining friends and relatives and
attending social functions.
To manage the conflict in her personal life, the working woman will resort to overlapping roles.
Role overlap in family life will lead the working woman to role identification through a process
of diagnosis. In work life, role interdependence enables role legitimization for her as a result of
diagnosis. This results in harmony between family life and work life through role clarity in the
former and role integration in the latter. Therefore, the working woman will redesign
relationships in the family space and redefine roles in the work space to achieve equilibrium and
therefore work-life balance.

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 Length: Min 400 words to max 500-600 words

 Tone: Informative, persuasive and motivational, suitable for working professionals

Topic: Creating Work-Life balance

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