Work Life Balance: What are the main challenges for women in the corporate sector? Is it related to their family life?

A study to gain insights into the main factors and challenges that Irish women working in the corporate sector experience in relation to their work life balance and whether or not it is related to their family life outside of work. Work Life Balance (WLB) is a very important aspect of the working environment but is often neglected by employees. There has been a lot of research carried out on the topic of WLB however there has been little research conducted on the challenges women face in relation to WLB. Moving away from traditional times, society has changed from the prejudices women used to face when climbing up the corporate environment. This dissertation focuses on the main challenges for women working in the corporate sector in relation to their career progression and WLB. This research’s main aim was to identify the academic literature researched that examines some of the challenges related to WLB, for the individual, their work life and other aspects of life. This was carried out to help individuals experiencing work life Imbalance or help avoid Imbalance in the future. A quantitative method was carried out in this study using a survey among women working full-time and part-time with different marital status around 6 different companies in total to gain insights into the main challenges that women face in balancing work expectations and life pressures and responsibilities. The overall results showed the main difficulties women faced in summarising their WLB were trying to meet work demands while facing responsibilities outside of work (childcare responsibilities, family responsibilities), the majority of respondents felt they could improve their WLB and a large portion of respondents noted that their employers could help them to improve their WLB at work with less workloads, recognition for extra work and hard work, introduce flexi time/flexible working hours. The discussion concluding this paper brought together data collected from the surveys and academic literature researched. Recommendations discuss the future of work life balance issues and measures that can be put in place at home and at work to help improve self-satisfaction. The aim of this dissertation is to look at the main challenges that women face regarding their work life (climbing up the corporate ladder) and family life and their coping styles. The objective is to achieve both family and work satisfaction