Work-Life Balance & Work Outcomes of Mid-Career Women in Traveling Jobs
Reason to Choose This Topic
I have good exposure in both Corporate and Academic fields, and in both domains, I have found that females face more challenges compared to males. Both genders are educated and have equal responsibilities towards their families, yet a greater number of sacrifices seem to fall on women. This becomes more challenging when they opt for a migrating career. At different stages of life, women find themselves in a lurch. These questions compelled me to share my views with all.
Introduction
Times have changed. From the time when the husband earned and the wife stayed at home, to now when both earn. However, the wife still cooks, washes, and runs the house. So, how does she balance her migrating work with life at home?
Over the years, women in India have struggled to establish an identity and create a mark in both social and organizational platforms.
Challenges in Traveling Careers
Women throughout the world are leveraging their power as leaders in every platform, such as Managers, Engineers, Doctors, Teachers, etc., and are accepting the challenging roles of migrating jobs by choosing careers as journalists, air hostesses, corporate trainers, and in the pharmaceutical industry. They are paving the way for a future where girls feel empowered to join the profession. However, challenges exist more in traveling jobs, including balancing community and family life with the demands of a time-consuming profession, and navigating the sensitive landscape of gender stereotypes that exist in many societies.
Career Challenges at Different Stages of Life
At the earlier stage, women who lived alone described themselves as ideal employees, available for long working hours, traveling, and sometimes moving from one location to another rather easily. Thus, they saw their personal life situation as advancing their opportunities in working life.
But women at midlife, often characterized as part of the sandwich generation, have personal and traveling work-related needs. Work-family balance is a key issue as they deal with the potentially conflicting demands of their traveling careers, children and childcare, elder care, and other personal life issues. Social support is a critical resource for working women to enable their continued success in both work and family domains. Women at midlife typically take stock of the priorities in their lives and make adjustments that allow them to align their activities with their internal values; this often involves increasing the time they devote to family.
Women who had spouses faced dual-career-couple challenges. The focus was on the spouses' work opportunities. This situation was sometimes solved by spouses living in different places, intentionally looking for an opportunity to work for the same employer, or just looking for a new job at the wife's place. Sometimes that limited women's opportunities in working life.
Moreover, the situation of being a mother of young children also sometimes affected females' attitudes towards their work and career, and they confided that their traveling career and work were no longer so central in their life. Usually, it goes the way that the woman is the one who stays at home and the man continues his career. The seesaw dimension also emerged within different life stages. In the stage of employment, there is stress associated with the job itself, including work overload, the hours of working, decision-making attitude, and the physical work environment. Role-based stress includes role conflict, role ambiguity, and job responsibility. Career stress refers to the lack of opportunity for career development and promotion, as well as job insecurity. On the other hand, stressors associated with the work-family interface include conflicts of loyalty, spillover of demands from one domain to the other, and life events. Consistent with stressors associated with the job itself and work demands, shift work hours have a significant effect on the physical, psychological, and emotional well-being of women employees. Shift work is significantly related to greater marital disagreements and child-related problems, posing challenges for mid-career women in migrating jobs, trying to negotiate the work-family interface.
Some Thoughts
Thus, the multiple roles in modern societies, for instance as employees, parents, or spouses, have been found to either enrich lives or cause conflicts in them. In other words, experiences in one role diminish or improve the quality of life in another role. Balance between these two life spheres has been defined as "satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home with a minimum role conflict," taking into account both positive and negative sides of work-life conflicts as well as enrichment. This leads to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and broadening the view of private life reconciliation.
Reason to Choose This Topic
I have good exposure in both Corporate and Academic fields, and in both domains, I have found that females face more challenges compared to males. Both genders are educated and have equal responsibilities towards their families, yet a greater number of sacrifices seem to fall on women. This becomes more challenging when they opt for a migrating career. At different stages of life, women find themselves in a lurch. These questions compelled me to share my views with all.
Introduction
Times have changed. From the time when the husband earned and the wife stayed at home, to now when both earn. However, the wife still cooks, washes, and runs the house. So, how does she balance her migrating work with life at home?
Over the years, women in India have struggled to establish an identity and create a mark in both social and organizational platforms.
Challenges in Traveling Careers
Women throughout the world are leveraging their power as leaders in every platform, such as Managers, Engineers, Doctors, Teachers, etc., and are accepting the challenging roles of migrating jobs by choosing careers as journalists, air hostesses, corporate trainers, and in the pharmaceutical industry. They are paving the way for a future where girls feel empowered to join the profession. However, challenges exist more in traveling jobs, including balancing community and family life with the demands of a time-consuming profession, and navigating the sensitive landscape of gender stereotypes that exist in many societies.
Career Challenges at Different Stages of Life
At the earlier stage, women who lived alone described themselves as ideal employees, available for long working hours, traveling, and sometimes moving from one location to another rather easily. Thus, they saw their personal life situation as advancing their opportunities in working life.
But women at midlife, often characterized as part of the sandwich generation, have personal and traveling work-related needs. Work-family balance is a key issue as they deal with the potentially conflicting demands of their traveling careers, children and childcare, elder care, and other personal life issues. Social support is a critical resource for working women to enable their continued success in both work and family domains. Women at midlife typically take stock of the priorities in their lives and make adjustments that allow them to align their activities with their internal values; this often involves increasing the time they devote to family.
Women who had spouses faced dual-career-couple challenges. The focus was on the spouses' work opportunities. This situation was sometimes solved by spouses living in different places, intentionally looking for an opportunity to work for the same employer, or just looking for a new job at the wife's place. Sometimes that limited women's opportunities in working life.
Moreover, the situation of being a mother of young children also sometimes affected females' attitudes towards their work and career, and they confided that their traveling career and work were no longer so central in their life. Usually, it goes the way that the woman is the one who stays at home and the man continues his career. The seesaw dimension also emerged within different life stages. In the stage of employment, there is stress associated with the job itself, including work overload, the hours of working, decision-making attitude, and the physical work environment. Role-based stress includes role conflict, role ambiguity, and job responsibility. Career stress refers to the lack of opportunity for career development and promotion, as well as job insecurity. On the other hand, stressors associated with the work-family interface include conflicts of loyalty, spillover of demands from one domain to the other, and life events. Consistent with stressors associated with the job itself and work demands, shift work hours have a significant effect on the physical, psychological, and emotional well-being of women employees. Shift work is significantly related to greater marital disagreements and child-related problems, posing challenges for mid-career women in migrating jobs, trying to negotiate the work-family interface.
Some Thoughts
Thus, the multiple roles in modern societies, for instance as employees, parents, or spouses, have been found to either enrich lives or cause conflicts in them. In other words, experiences in one role diminish or improve the quality of life in another role. Balance between these two life spheres has been defined as "satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home with a minimum role conflict," taking into account both positive and negative sides of work-life conflicts as well as enrichment. This leads to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and broadening the view of private life reconciliation.
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