Experiences of working women in India under family-friendly policies: straight from the horse’s mouth

ABSTRACT

Achieving work-life balance is one of the major challenges faced by women around the world. This study adopts a qualitative approach to examine professional women’s perspectives on their work situations and family-friendly policies, taking India as an example. The goal is to explore and explain some of the major issues confronting Indian working women when they try to balance their work and family life. As women are the traditional homemakers in Indian society, they often struggle to find such balance and this challenge is one of the key reasons why they quit their jobs. A better understanding of the factors hindering the utilization of family-friendly policies in India might help encourage more Indian women to enter the workforce. This research found that professional women bear more family responsibilities than their male partners and experience work-family and family-work interference, resulting in strain when attempting to achieve work-life balance. It was also discovered that there is a dearth of employer and co-worker support for the use and implementation of family-friendly policies. The results of this study have practical implications for how women can better benefit from family-friendly policies and shoulder their dual roles.

Practitioners’ points

● Recognition of the requirements for genuine work-life balance for professional women and identification of a better direction for new family-friendly policies;

● Identification of the key factors hindering maintenance of a good work-life balance, solving latent problems and increasing the availability of family-friendly policies;

● Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of family-friendly policies that will encourage a greater number of professional women to join the labour market, thus supplying an additional, highly qualified workforce in India;

● Improving employer awareness of the need to provide appropriate family-friendly policies; improving employee awareness of how to benefit from family-friendly policies and generating a friendly working environment that can benefit Indian society in the long term.

KEYWORDS:

• Family-friendly policies
• work-life balance
• professional women
• work-life conflict
• India

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Ms Cheng Qi, Mr Nantapong Butakhieo and Ms Vivian Wong for their assistance in carrying out this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lina Vyas

Lina Vyas is an Associate Professor with the Department of Asian and Policy Studies (APS) of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (FLASS) at The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK).