Impact of Women's Educational Achievement and Employment on
Their Families
Ms. Thilini WIJETUNGE (Sri Lanka)
Sri Lanka has made remarkable progress in eradicating gender disparities in educationin the past few decades. The enrolment rate of girls and boys in the primary education levelis the same, with no gender gap. Girls and boys both equally enter into the arena ofeducation. What is more interesting is that girls excel in higher education. During the recentyears, girls have outnumbered boys in university admissions, a process which is highly
competitive in Sri Lanka. Equipped with the high educational qualifications, many girls are
joining the job market and get qualified for lucrative professions. Even in the public sector, it
is conspicuous that women represent the majority of the various categories of public sector
jobs. Women's educational achievements have also led many women to be engaged inprestigious professions such as administrators, medical doctors, engineers, university
academics and managers in various other technical fields.
Traditionally, in Sri Lanka, women have been the majority in the caregiving sectors,
such as teaching and nursing professions. But now there is a change as they represent themajority of clerical and other executive positions which were previously dominated by males.
It is surprising to note that during the last few years the number of women who entered into
Sri Lanka Administrative Service has increased at an exponential rate.
Of course this has had a positive impact in that women's educational achievements haveenabled them to enjoy equal status in society and achieve financial and other types ofautonomy in all walks of life. They are well recognized in society and have the ability ofnetworking and moving forward. This has a positive impact on their families too, because
when mothers are well educated and socially recognized, they are able to contribute to thefamilies’ wellbeing in various ways. For instance, they are able to direct their children tobetter education.
But what is now coming to the forefront is the recognition of the fact that, since womenare supposed to perform their reproductive role, they need to have the support of theirfamilies to balance their career and family life. In the absence of other support structures, itis the family that has to share the responsibility of homemaking and domestic chores. Often,understanding husbands share their family responsibilities and support their wives to carryout their jobs smoothly. In this scenario, this is a win-win situation which results in better
prospects for their families.
But even with all these positive aspects, one can see instances where prevalent genderstereotypes and attitudes have generated negative impact on this situation. Traditionallymales were considered as breadwinners of the family and females were in the subordinate
position. When the wife works and stays out of home in pursuit of her employment, thehusband inevitably has to share domestic responsibilities, which can generate resentment if
the husband is old-fashioned and has old patriarchal attitudes. The situation becomes evenworse, if the wife's employment status is higher than that of her husband. Sometimes it may
generate inferiority complex resulting in family conflicts. He still wants his wife to attend
everything in the household and does not support her to balance their careers and thefamilies. In such a context, women get overburdened and stressed out with their household
responsibilities as well as career responsibilities. As Sri Lanka does not have well-equipped
and affordable day care centers yet, young mothers face a lot of difficulties in carrying out
their jobs. Especially women who hold high positions get miserable as they do not haveconducive environment at home or in society to get support to perform both the roles: theproductive role for the economy and nation building; and the reproductive role as mothers
and home makers in a fulfilling manner. This is an undesirable situation for the family andsociety at large.

Figure 1- A Sri Lankan employed mother escorting her daughter to pre-school

Figure 2- Children under the loving care of grand parents
Career women face some more challenges with the prevalent negative social norms insociety. In order to fulfill the career responsibilities, any person has to sacrifice family time.
In such instances help and support of husbands are necessary to cope with family affairs. In
the absence of such support, children of these mothers are often left in the care of theirgrandparents or baby sitters. Help from grandparents are now taken for granted by most ofyoung parents. Once the grandparents undertake childcare responsibilities on a full-timebasis, they lack leisure time during their old age. Consequently, many old people in thepresent society lack time to engage in their personal matters, religious work or any othersocial work. This negative aspect which emerges due to women's full-time employment needs
to be tackled sympathetically by families. The state should also contribute by providing
affordable and safe day care facilities/crèches. Introduction of flexi timings or teleworking toenable mothers to work flexible schedules or work from home is another option. Society,families and the government have to work together to change the mindsets and provide thesocial infrastructure to enable the country to sustain the high levels of educational
attainment and workforce participation of its women.