Abstract
The purpose of this research is to explore and understand the factors that enable some career women successfully balance both career and family roles. This research adopted an exploratory research approach into finding the contributing factors through online surveys, questionnaires, and interviews.
The research revealed that career women in Ghana balance their work and family roles under four main themes; external help, proper planning, maintaining good relationships with supervisors and subordinates, as well as the flexible schedules of their jobs.
It is recommended that organizations should have a friendly environment and policies that encourage good communication between employees, employers. This healthy relationship is believed to enable career women talk about issues they face at home and work to their employees and colleges who give them assistance when needed. From the research findings, most women admitted the concrete support from their husbands was a major factor in balancing work and family roles. Therefore this research recommends a national awareness campaign to sensitize other husbands to equally contribute with the upkeep of the home.
Keywords: successful work-family balance, educated Ghanaian woman, white collar job, work-family conflict, satisfaction, roles, career
Table of Contents
- INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………. 1
- Background………………………………………………………………………….. 1
- LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………………………. 13
- METHODOLOGY………………………………………………………. 24
- DATA ANALYSIS……………………………………………………… 28
- Conclusion…………………………………………………………….. 54
REFERENCES……………………………………………………………… 59
APPENDIX…………………………………………………………………. 65
1 INTRODUCTION
- Background
Within ‘traditional’ Ghanaian society, a woman is generally expected to marry, and most women do so before their 30s (Sally Baden, Green, Otoo- Oyortey, 1994). The societal expectation of such married women was to stay at home to take care of the family, while the expectation for married men was in the labour market outside the home (Noer, n.d). In this same ‘traditional setting, women are generally regarded as mothers or wives (Hari, n.d), and this was as a result of how women were believed to be nurturing beings and as such were expected to be the home makers and take care of the children.
In the nineteenth century during the colonial era, the educational system that existed was geared towards men only, which resulted in a huge gap between men and women in terms of job opportunities. The curriculum used in schools benefitted only the boys, thus, affected the women in getting employed. This unequal benefit resulted from the societal perception that women need not to be educated because their role was the household chores (Adu-Boahen, 2008, pg.91-93).
Women all over the ten regions of Ghana participated in a series of meetings from June, 2003 to July, 2004 in Accra to talk about some challenges that women in Ghana, and other African countries were facing. They identified and they brought to light some challenges such as how girls were misrepresented in all levels of schools, deprivation of women and the inability
of the health care system to take care of them. These women also identified some of the causes of this misrepresentation as poverty, early marriage, and teenage pregnancy. In explaining these factors, the report noted that in Ghana early marriage is deemed very important for a teenage girl, since that was her main role in society, therefore was not encouraged to pursue higher education by her parents or community. (The Womens’ Manifesto for Ghana, 2004). Therefore a teenage girl was not encouraged to pursue higher education by her parents or community, because her education was seen as a waste of money. Also, poverty was mostly to the disadvantage of the girl as opposed to the boy in terms of who was to dropout from school to reduce the burden of paying school fees. Since girl-child education was not considered important in the traditional setting, the girls in the family who attend school were likely to be the ones who will quit school for their brothers to continue schooling.
This situation of gender disparity that existed between men and women clearly shows the gap between the expectation or role of the girl and boy in the Ghanaian traditional society. Here the girl was expected to perform the domestic chores at home, and the men were to be educated in order to be employed to provide for the family.
Over the years, these traditional expectations and stereotypes about womens’ education has significantly changed. Women in this day and era do not see themselves as just mothers and wives, responsible for only domestic duties. We now have women working in areas such as the corporate
environment and even taking up top management roles as their male counterparts.
