Work-life balance (WLB) has direct impact on enhanced individual well-being and productivity, therefore, organizations and governments have put efforts on ensuring its realization. However, organizations have been criticised... [ view full abstract ]
Work-life balance (WLB) has direct impact on enhanced individual well-being and productivity, therefore, organizations and governments have put efforts on ensuring its realization. However, organizations have been criticised that although they make claims about importance of family-friendly and diversity management practices, reality portrays situations where employees are expected to check their emails and respond to them after the working hours, career advancement is hindered to female employees with children, etc. Hence, the topic is not one-sided and calls for empirical studies to identify factors for establishing WLB in different institutional and societal contexts as well as individual and organizational ways of dealing with the obstacles.
On the conceptual level, the term WLB refers to an equilibrium between one’s time and physical and/or mental efforts devoted for her/his economic activities and for personal engagements. Review of the topic in the related EU political documents reveals that the concept has been used for more than 50 years denoting work-family issues mainly, meanwhile attempts to expand its meaning for covering harmonization of professional and personal life as well as other (not only parenting) topics are just very recent. Review of academic works on the work-life balance topic also suggests that the concept can be narrowed to and used as a synonym for work-family balance. However, in our work, the WLB is perceived in a wider perspective: as covering complex junction of all aspects of an individual’s life and as defining not only a state of the art, but also as grounded on interplay between an individual’s choices and organizational policy features.
The paper presents findings of a small scale pilot survey among Lithuanian women working in academia (n=15, 2016). Results of content analysis suggest that the survey participants sacrifice the larger part of their time for the work; the remaining minimal resources are devoted for the family and, with great exceptions, for personal needs and interests. Thematic analysis of the self-reported experiences reveals that the main tensions relate to economic insecurity and strive for self-realization. Instantaneous resolutions of those tensions are based on individualized personal tactics; there are attempts to develop long-term strategies, but seemingly they are not successful. On the one hand, such findings repeat reports from other countries (thus scientific cultures), suggesting validation of universality of the phenomenon. However, on the other hand, Lithuanian academic women’s experiences are embedded in the context of the absence of gender equality policy, meanwhile many other countries have established gender action plans, gender audits and other gender equality measures in academic environments for many years already. In this respect, the context of the findings contrasts with the EU policy which requires implementation of work-life balance in all sectors of economic activities. Based on the findings, we discuss organizational practices which are needed in the post-soviet academic context to mitigate experienced stress because of work-life disbalance as well as directions for further research.
