HRM
Research Paper
E-ISSN No : 2454-9916 | Volume : 2 | Issue : 7 | July 2016
CHALLENGES OF WOMEN ADMINISTRATORS FOR WORK- LIFE BALANCE Mrs. T. Kumuthavalli Assistant Professor, Department of Lifelong Learning, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli – 620 023 ABSTRACT The present study intended to spotlight the challenges facing women administrators for maintaining work-life balance in five administrative titles i.e. school administration, college administration, university administration, social administration and corporate administration in and around Tiruchirappalli District and the general details of the respondents. Descriptive design was used to provide the answer to the current research problem to describe the existing situation prevailing in the study area. Simple random sampling method was adopted and 100 women administrators were selected and distributed questionnaires and only 75 respondents' responses were found suitable for the present research. Diverse approaches involving face to face interaction, observation and questionnaire techniques were used. Thirty four items in four different categories such as Work- related challenges, Personal challenges, Social challenges and Physical challenges were used through selfprepared Questionnaire. As per the present study many problems such as community faith that women are best family administrators than social administrators, gender discrimination, poor family support for doing works and difficulty in managing work and family responsibilities were common to all women administrators. But some challenges are related to their age, marital status and experiences of the women administrators. KEYWORDS: Challenges, Women Administrators, Work-life Balance. Introduction The meaning of Work-life balance is an individual's ability to meet their work and other life commitments. It includes both work and family environment. Balancing together becomes a very big challenge for working people specifically for women workers. It is a healthy merger of an employee's career and private responsibilities. It creates more flexibility, greater control on both work and family life; provides job satisfaction, extends safety and security measures and also compensates their work. Some common challenges are faced both by men and women in all the work nature. Men may take breather at their home, but all the time it may not for women in all work natures. Very few women workers are equally sharing their responsibilities with their male partners, but most of the women do still exist not living. One simple example of this is household activities like cooking, washing, cleaning, helping others to complete their task, caring children and aged, maintaining family apart from their office or outside works. Foremost important point is society dumps more and more responsibilities for women than men. Even today also this kind of dumping exists more in rural and unorganized sectors leads so many health problems, sometime gulp women's life. At last family and others realize their over drudgery towards women, but there is no use at all. Society with lot of live examples it could not transforms immediately, because the mind-set of the individuals influences more. Strategies to cope up with these challenges for maintaining work- life balance is overall change in the mind-sets of the society. Administration Field Administration work includes both internal and external administrations. Administrative works are related to the following fields like maintenance of records, finance, planning, budgeting, training, , supervision of human beings, communication, co-ordination, infrastructure, initiative roles, implementation, direction, physical distribution, logistics, billing, meeting arrangement, reports, documentary evidences, recruitment and selection, admission, overall maintenance, etc., administrators are titled as human resource administrator, office manager, assistant manager, supervisor, office administrator, secretary, executive secretary, executive manager, legal officer, corporate manager, country coordinator, chief administrator, principals, heads of the Institutions, directors from all fields, project manager, IAS, IPS, IFS officer, Chancellors, Political leaders, Departmental officers, all the administrators of ministries etc., including agriculture, entertainment, Education, health, women and child development, forest, resources, law, electricity, textile, production units, transportation etc., endless fields and endless tittles are won by the administration field. Administrative role are the major work in any kind business venture. Without effective administrative structure and administrative personnel the entire efforts will be spoiled. Effective and efficient administrative structure and administrators are really the economic leaders of any nation. The present study focuses the administrators working in schools, colleges, universities, corporate and social field administrators from government, quasi government, and private sectors including self –employment ventures. Women Administrators Modern society gives more and more opportunity for women in administration. They are equalled talent with men and they have entered almost all the fields as men entered. The responsibility of women has to play dual role than men (Aycan et al. 2007). This is the place where much consideration is required. Women
administrators' confidence to reach or retain administration position required effective management and communication skills to converse through the administrative structure and demands of the designation. Worldwide more and more women administrators are coming up with full drive. But challenges facing by women administrators are also developing according to their organization and family structures. Importance of the study Work-life balance provides the way for engaging and retaining employees for a long term. Improper work-life balance will lead to tiredness, inefficiency, less interest, less participation and involvement, poor concentration, dissatisfaction, physical and mental stress, workers absenteeism, attrition and turnoff, poor health and family misunderstanding and the related issues among the working people in general and women in particular. It is needed here to apply this concept to all nature of jobs for both the gender. On one hand poor work-life balance causes serious negative impact to the employer by way of involving more cost on recruitment, selection, and training, loss of organizational knowledge, skill and intellectual capital. In contrary, if the company supports workers work-life balance, they may gain more benefits than before through higher level of workers retention, engagement, happiness, motivation, performance, productivity and participation and the like. Therefore balancing work-life is an important factor to concentrate for more profitable working environment. While observing gender, it is more imperative one for women employees at all levels. Accordingly, administration is a more complicated and pressure able field. Hence, it is essential to study the challenges faced by the women administrators for maintaining worklife balance. Related Literature Burley (1994) examined that family related work role strains are more commonly prevails among women employees, but men employees also experience stress ensuing from at variance roles and demands at their environment. Campbell and Kennard (1994) expressed their ideas that, there is an effect on the work commitment and job performance of family responsibilities of women. Foley & Powell, (1997) additionally addressed the business marriage partners to reveals their work –life balance. The causes of personal and social challenges are of mismatched between work and family life responsibilities. On this way, Bloom and Erlandson (2003), studies assure that appropriate training processes are important for refreshing the women administrators and make them to work more dynamically. Also they depicts emotional feeling of the women are reflected in their administration. Deery,2008; Wang and Wallumbwa, (2007) noted that, there is a high rate of tiredness and job stress and finally resulting in high attrition. According to the study of Gunavathy and Suganya (2007), married women employees of BPO companies found more than 2/3 of the defendants stated that they have experienced work-life imbalance particularly in personal life. The sources for work-life imbalance were categorized in to work related and personal factors it leads to stress, ill-health and poor performance in work. Most of the respondents experienced guiltiness for not sparing time with family members and also expressing of negative emotions on family members and co-workers. Root and Wooten, (2008), expressed that the fixed shift works causes lack of work and family balance among the workers. Some bosses recognize the human
Copyright© 2016, IERJ. This open-access article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License which permits Share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and Adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) under the Attribution-NonCommercial terms.
International Education & Research Journal [IERJ]
61