Prevalence Of Work-Life Balance Concern In Female Dominated Corporations
The modern era is often associated with the globalization, innovation and their consequences. Outcomes of these tendencies include rapid expansion of businesses in all spheres: production, retail, service sector etc. So, as a consequence, there are lots and lots of companies and organizations. Each business has its own trends, traditions and principles. One firm could be run by a women and have women as most of employees. Another might be completely different, i. e. mostly with men dominating at all positions. This difference in gender, however, produces more differences as outcomes, as people of diverse sexes have diagonally opposite outlooks on the world. This essay will point out some of the arguments for the claim, that corporations dominated by women are concerned with work-life balance more.
Firstly, females are more family oriented by their social role. That is not a secret, that working women after a shift at work, let’s say from 9-to-6, is obliged to take care of the family: cook, clean, help children and much more. At the same time, men mostly concentrate on their jobs, and do not have many responsibilities within the family, and moreover do not feel the need to attempt to do something from the housework or childcare. As Mitnick (2007) mentioned, the issue about the work-life balance of females was highlighted after a historical change, in 1980s. In other words, when the trend of women starting to attend full-day schemes at work was widening, the question of balancing job and personal life arose. So, the use of any kinds of programs, helping to boost the effectiveness of spare time, could be used to organize life better in terms of perfect combination of work and social role, is primary carried through by females.
Secondly, that is the ability to focus on one specific activity at a time. That is a scientifically known fact, that women are better at multitasking than men. However, in the context of balanced work and other life, that is a significant drawback. For example, after the working shift, women are more likely to stress over it and think about the work on and on, and vice-versa: during the working hours, think about the problems at home or about children. However men at the same time are more relaxed: after leaving the job in the workday, they shift their attention onto sports, hobbies or simply leisure. Kashitskaya (2012) states that planning and organizing in advance is the key to success for the modern female. So, the programs that help to find the balance between work and leisure are more used by female, as they need help in this situation more than male do.
Thirdly, it is the increased role of women in the modern economic system. According to Giddens (2011), the economic power of females is growing now, diminishing the gender inequality that discriminated women rights. As a consequence of that, women are not getting married and carrying children, and, as a result, the fertility rates across he developed countries are dramatically falling. Melia (2015) noted that many females are just unaware of how the whole family life should be constructed, because of their workaholic lifestyle. As for workaholic men, that is not the issue, because if they marry, that would be their spouse who is more likely to be in charge of the family life. So, men are not very dependent on such guidelines, while some women, especially workaholics need them.
In Britain, as mentioned by Arthur (2002), the key outcome of social working environment is supporting the idea of work-life balance for employees on all levels. British women are mostly career oriented, especially in big corporations, and do not keep up with maintaining personal life, in order to reach professional success firstly.
That is why, for British women, the usage of such programs, aimed to maintain personal life as much as work are very important. However, in Kazakhstan, the trend is different, but not in the direct way. Working women are able to maintain career and personal life nowadays, but are not so career oriented, so it is not hard for many of females to give up the work, and fully devote themselves to family life, so the need in work-life balancing programs here is very low.
All in all, existing globalization creates absolutely opposite consequences in the world. They are relevant to individual’s work and life proportion in life, and somehow determine the trend, according to which the world lives. For men, the issue is not as crucial as for women, by a bunch of reasons: social factors, increased economic power and biological ability of multitasking etc. And overall, work-life programs are more popular amongst women nowadays, but the extent still depends on particular country or region that is under consideration.
