Implications Of Work And Family

No person can ignore the importance of family and work in his/her life. Work and family are the most important aspects of people’s lives and, contrary to the initial belief that they are distinct parts of life (Staines, 1980). They are closely related (Ford, Heinen, & Langkamer, 2007).
Many of the behavioural researchers have shown interest in research on work and family issues from past few decades. Much of the impetus for this research has come from changing demographics and the changing structure of the family with more women entering the workforce (e.g. The 2001 National Work- life Conflict Study, Public Health Agency of Canada as cited in Rajadhyakshya & Velgach, 2009). Work-family balance has important implications for individuals,
More and more women joining the workforce have led to change in the concept of gender role. Traditional view has always defined gender roles by considering women’s major responsibility as the maintenance of family including home and child care while men’s main responsibility as earning for the family. However, with more and more women entering the workforce and pursuing careers, the defined gender roles are forced to change (Sevim, 2006). Most women do not have responsibility in one domain anymore; they have to balance the competing demands of both work and family (Moore & Gobi, 1995; Phillips & Imhoff, 1997). Therefore, when women work outside home and have limited capacity to care for the family and home, men as a spouse have to increase their engagement in the home or family domain to compensate for the women’s decreased engagement in these domains (Coltrane, 1997; Lou, Gilmour, Kao, & Huang, 2006). Therefore, most studies have examined negative affect that has been caused by the concept of dual earner. Gender has been largely overlooked in the literature on Work Family Enrichment (WFE) (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006). The study of WF enrichment without consideration of gender and gender role ideology appears to be a limited view as the concept of Work Family Balance has been resulted from the change in the traditional concept of women as child and home care taker and men as
Increasing participation of Nepali women in professional works has been primarily driven by the economic need of family (Rana & Adhikari, 2013). Nepali tradition shows that large number of people stays in joint-family and the role of women in family is supposed to be important from the viewpoint of maintaining tradition and cultural values (Shakya, 2010; as cited in Rana & Adhikari, 2013). It can be stated that Nepali culture even have allowed women to involve in financial contribution for family along with that expects women to equally and more importantly perform the home and family related duties as well. Rana & Adhikari (2013) has found that role conflict is positively associated with WF conflict and negatively associated with family support. However, this study was conducted only in Butwal Municipality among 74 women professionals. Therefore, it is hard to comprehend whether men and women while engaged in multiple roles experience transfer of benefit from one role to another in the absence of empirical studies in Nepali