Enactors or reactors? Work-life border management for women in law in Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Work-family border theory casts individuals as protagonists who are enactive rather than reactive in shaping borders between work and personal life domains. To what extent is this the case in strongly patriarchal contexts that constrain women’s personal agency? This qualitative study conducted with 32 female lawyers, magistrates and justices in Nigeria shows how participants engage in new border management tactics in response to context-specific institutional and social factors. Faced with public harassment and physical assault in a country where violence against women is normalised, female legal professionals restructure family borders to extend no further than their homes and retain police attachés as border-keepers. When their families are reconfigured via nonconsensual polygamous marriages, women’s work borders are strengthened by co-wives performing domestic labour and family borders are strengthened by co-wives’ assistance with job tasks, thereby reducing participants’ work-family conflict. Rather than strategically enacting work-life borders within known situational constraints, Nigerian female legal professionals react to involuntary events that limit their agency to negotiate desired work and personal lives.

KEYWORDS:

• Work-family
• work-life balance
• border theory
• gender
• patriarchy
• Nigeria
• women in law
• polygamy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

T. Alexandra Beauregard

Dr. T. Alexandra Beauregard is a Professor of organisational psychology at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research interests are centred on the work-life interface, flexible working arrangements, and diversity management, with a particular focus on gender identity and gender equality. She has published widely on these topics in academic journals and in practitioner outlets, as well as authoring chapters in a number of edited scholarly books and teaching-oriented texts. Alexandra has carried out commissioned research for both public- and private-sector organizations such as Acas, Avon UK, and LinkedIn, and has delivered a number of invited lectures on the topics of gender equality, diversity management, and flexible working to organizations such as the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, Citywealth, the Columbia Business School Alumni Association, the Financial Conduct Authority, Forward Ladies, Handelsbanken, KPMG, and Shell.

Toyin Ajibade Adisa

Dr. Toyin Ajibade Adisa is a senior lecturer in HRM/OB at UEL. He teaches and researches issues in comparative human resource management, Employment relations and Reforms in emerging and developing economies. Toyin is a senior fellow of Higher Education Academy, a fellow of Chartered Management Institute (CMI), and a member of Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD). Toyin’s primary research interests lie in the broad academic disciplines of human resource management, workplace behaviour, and employee relations. He is particularly interested in African HRM practices and policies and contemporary Sub-Saharan African employment relations.