Negotiating business and family demands: the response strategies of highly educated Indian female entrepreneurs

ABSTRACT

This study explores how highly educated Indian women entrepreneurs prioritize and manage the work and family role boundaries. It also explores whether boundary management strategies vary based on motherhood and business stages. We explored these issues by interviewing twenty-five financially successful well-educated women entrepreneurs from five cities (Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Cochin) in India. We found that the mothers with younger children and entrepreneurs in the early stages of the business preferred to integrate the work and family roles than to set a clear boundary between the roles, using various boundary management tactics to achieve work-life balance (WLB). They attempted to minimize imbalance by creating a resource pool, flexible scheduling, working fewer hours, and preferring workplace proximity. Social support seemed to be essential to reconcile the multiple role demands. According to the business and motherhood stages, significant differences were observed in the type and level of WLB issues women face. The study provides recommendations for successful reconciliation between the work and non-work lives in the Indian context. In this culturally unique context, while access to institutional support for women entrepreneurs is meager, any effort to help them reconcile their work and family demands will be helpful.

KEYWORDS:

• Women entrepreneurs
• work-life balance
• social support
• work-family
• boundary theory
• India

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jasmine Banu

Jasmine Banu is a (MS and PhD) research scholar in organizational behavior area at the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India. She holds Bachelors of Engineering (Computer Science) and Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration (HR) with distinction. She is UGC-NET qualified, and has 10+ years of experience in the IT industry. Her areas of interest are at the intersection of women entrepreneurship and work–family interface. She has published in many reputed international conferences and peer-reviewed journals such as Employee Relations: The International Journal, Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, Industrial and Commercial Training, Academy of Management Annual Meeting, etc.

Rupashree Baral

Rupashree Baral is an Associate Professor at the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India with a PhD from IIT Bombay, India. She has more than 10 years of experience in teaching and research. Her key interest lies in teaching, research, training and consulting in the areas of work-life balance, women in management and entrepreneurship, employer branding, corporate social responsibility, knowledge sharing and hiding behavior and technology and human interface.

Katherina Kuschel

Katherina Kuschel is an Associate Researcher at CENTRUM PUCP, Peru, exploring the experience of Latin American women entrepreneurs. She co-edited a Routledge book on wellbeing and women entrepreneurs, and a special issue at the International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal on Women Entrepreneurship within STEM. She was a Visiting Researcher at University of Siegen, Germany, where she led an international collaborative research project on entrepreneurial failure. She holds a PhD in Social Psychology from Universitat Autònoma, Barcelona, Spain. Her areas of specialization and research are entrepreneurship, focussing on work-life balance and women entrepreneurs in technology.