Work-life balance of working women in Pakistan - A case study of China Mobile Contact Centre in Islamabad
Creators: name: Malik, Owais Munir
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024

description: This study provides an insight into lived experience of working women employed incontact center industry of Pakistan on their work-life balance. Pakistan represents aconservative society with patriarchal roots, when women are discouraged to seek paidemployment, and remain involved in unpaid household work. Even women working onpaid jobs are also expected to discharge household responsibilities. Considering thetough nature of contact center job, maintaining a work-life balance could become quitedifficult for the working women in a patriarchal society like Pakistan. Previous researchstudying work-life balance of working women employed in contact center is mostlyconfined to the developed countries or India (Belt, 2002; Domingo-Cabarrubias, 2012;Rashmi & Kataria, 2021; Tara & Ilavarasan, 2009, 2011). This leaves a gap in the literature,which justifies this study. This study provides an insight into the work and life domainsof the women working in contact center industry of Pakistan, highlights the factor thatinfluence their work life balance, and contributes towards theory and practice of worklife balance of working women in a patriarchal society i.e. Pakistan.This research adopted a phenomenological research strategy to relate to livedexperience of the working women on their work-life balance situation. The study usedin-depth interviews to collect the data, which was analyzed through a systematiccoding approach to understand work and life domains of the working women. Thestudy used theoretical lens of work-life conflict theory to enrich the findings andpropose an extended version of work-life conflict model suitable for patriarchalsocieties like Pakistan. Findings of this study noted that women working in the contact center industry actuallyhave two work domains i.e. work and family, and their life domain is a distant fromtheir family-work domain. Considering the work domain, work routines of working women were caricaturized by high work load, long working hours, lack of flexibility,and meager managerial or organizational support. As a result, the working womenexperiencing negative behavioral, psychological, and physical consequences. Therewas also some indication of discrimination, lower motivation and lower satisfactionfrom the work. The family domain of the working women was dominated by householdmanagement and care giving responsibilities, while the life domain was neglected andwas represented by leisure time with family, self, and social circle. Findings of thestudy highlighted existence of a conflict between these three domains, making it work family-life conflict, where the nature of the conflict was temporal, roles based, andstrain based in nature. The study noted that social role expectations from the womenforce them to juggle between work and household responsibilities, documenting theinfluence of socially enforced roles on work-family conflict. It was also noted that workand family domain responsibilities leave no personal, free, or leisure time at disposalof the working women. This study recommends that binging more flexibility in the workroutines and provision or managerial or organizational support could improve work family-life balance situation of the working women. This study contributes to the theoryand practice on work-life debate by highlighting notions of a work-family-life conflict,and recognizing the influence of social role of women on the conflict.