Probing Work-life Balance through Gender and Professions’ Lens: Reportage on Academics and Nurses in Ife Central Local Government, Osun-State, Nigeria

This paper evaluates work-life balance among professionals in Ife Central Local Government, Osun State, Southwestern, Nigeria, by focusing on academics and nurses, professions that are respectively key to the education and health sectors of the nation.

Eighty-nine respondents provided useful questionnaires from a population of academics in Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) and nurses located at OAU Health Centre and the University Community Health Clinic at the town centre of the local government sampled for this study. The collected data was quantitatively analysed using SPSS 21; the results provided descriptive statistics, charts and cross-tabulations to illuminate key issues.

The overall results indicated that employees’ gender and their professions impact their capability to manage their work-life balance (WLB). In more specific terms, the female gender was more challenged in achieving WLB than their male colleagues. Additionally, despite members of both professions experiencing work-life imbalance, the situation among academics was more precarious than among nurses.

The study concluded that in spite of gender-based and profession-linked WLB challenges faced by employees of the sampled organisations, awareness of related policies, their adequate implementation and positive perception from employees could boost organisational cost-effectiveness.