Work Life Balance: Growth and Importance for Working Women in Organised Sectors

The field of work-life balance is vast. Work-life research spans a wide array of disciplines such as sociology, psychology, organisational behaviour, human development, labour economics, industrial relations, management, demography, and women's studies. There has been a wealth of research undertaken on the topic over the past 30 years; but there is a little research exploring the experiences of people (especially women) in organized sector and 'minimal qualitative research in this area has undertaken. This paper therefore aims to fill this gap in the literature. With a focus on the organised sector of developing nations, a review of the literature around the topic of work-life balance and more specifically work-life balance initiatives is presented in this paper. This paper analyses the emergence of work-life balance discourse, from the days of early communal living till the present day theories, and presents a micro level model of work-life balance. Further, a detailed analysis of proven and anticipated benefits of work-life balance is presented to justify the need of work-life balance initiatives at organisational level during the present economic downturn as well as the role of government in applying work life balance initiative in the organised sector is also presented.