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This chapter challenges middle-class bias in work-life literature by examining work-life balance dynamics through a social class perspective. It reveals class-based disparities in physical, temporal, and psychological outcomes, including the role of economic capital in work-life balance and the challenges encountered by the socially mobile in achieving psychological balance. It emphasizes the need to acknowledge social class implications for work-life balance and urges organizations to address class-based inconsistencies and inequalities in their practices.

Prior research has shown that a work environment that facilitates work-life balance not only benefits the personal lives of employees but also leads to better job performance and ethical decision-making. Allocation of time between career and personal life is an age-old challenge for working people. Work-life balance refers to the manner in which people distribute time between their jobs and other activities, such as family, personal pursuits, and community involvement. This study compares the work-life balance perspectives of current and future accountants. Three research questions are examined. The first relates to the importance accountants place on work-life balance. The second concerns how work-life balance perspectives of current practitioners compare to future accountants. The third considers how gender differences affect work-life balance perspectives. Data for analysis was obtained via a survey of current accounting practitioners and of future accountants (students near graduation). Findings indicate that both current and future accountants believe that a healthy work-life balance is connected to work satisfaction, work performance, and ethical decision-making.

To shed light on how gender norms are reproduced in medical training and practice through an exploration of representations of the problem of “work–life balance.” Women physicians and women physician-researchers (WPs/WPRs) in Canada and in the United States experience social and health inequities when compared to their men colleagues. Despite current medical school acceptance parity, upon entering the medical workforce, women work harder than men to succeed within the historically male-dominated structures and value system of the medical profession.

We performed a critical discourse analysis of articles retrieved from academic databases and leading Anglo-American journals that discussed “work–life balance,” to investigate how the discourse contributed to, or challenged, the reproduction of gender norms in medicine.

While the medical literature acknowledges that the social and health inequities experienced by WP/WPR result from discriminatory norms and practices, it neglects to challenge built-in gendered inequities in benchmarks for success in the profession. Instead, proposed solutions require that WP/WPR themselves learn to cope and make better lifestyle choices, including downloading domestic responsibilities on socially disadvantaged – racialized and poor – women. Authors’ gender appears to make no difference.

Our search was limited to the Anglo-American literature, often retrieved articles inaccessible via our university library, excluded informal venues (e.g., blogs), and did not include cases of same-sex couples or interviews of WP/WPR. All these may have challenged components of our argument by revealing more nuanced debates, occurring under different political, cultural, and economic contexts.

While individual choices of WP/WPR are important to the protagonists, to successfully address the very real problem of work–life balance experienced by WP/WPR, patriarchal norms should be challenged, failure to comply with these norms should be rejected as explanations for work–life balance challenges, and norms themselves should become the focus of analysis and intervention.

The medical language used by physicians of both genders normalizes gendered inequities, favoring the success of medical men over women, and reproducing the professional and personal disadvantages experienced by the latter, further burdening socially disadvantaged women.

Studies suggest that women in law appear dissatisfied with the practice of law due to the difficulties of balancing work and family. Little research has examined how the contextual characteristics of law firms affect women lawyers’ sense of life balance and career satisfaction, which is the focus of this study. I propose that if women in law firms can have children and be just as satisfied with their careers and have the same degree of life balance as women without children, then women practicing law can “have it all”. I show how contextual characteristics of law firms are important in understanding mothers’ and non-mothers’ work experiences.

In recent years, preparations for the transition from the Post-industrial society to Community 5.0 have been continuing at full speed. The change in this process necessitates changes in the roles and structure of the labour force in societies. While work and family living spaces of the individual change the dimensions of his/her interaction, they increase the importance of work–family life balance gradually. The basis of conflicts (imbalances) in roles in work and family life is based on three pillars: time, tension and behaviour. The conflicts in the work and family life spaces take place in two sub-dimensions, namely ‘work-family conflict’ which is directed from work to family and ‘family-work conflict’ which is directed from family to work. The conflict between work and family life leads to individual, organisational and familial consequences. Effective communication with the social support of the organisation and the members of family is of great importance for individuals not to experience a work–family conflict.

This research aims to reveal the challenges faced by female entrepreneurs in Kosovo, emphasizing the challenge of work–life balance (WLB). As deliberated by many authors, concerning the term work–life balance, it is defined as the opportunity of balancing between personal life on the one hand and work on the other. The three research questions of this chapter were: do women entrepreneurs face difficulties on work–life balancing? do they involve other family members in business operations in order to help work–life balancing? and is their marital status a factor on WLB? This issue is more or less studied in the context of Kosovo. This is the reason why this research is conducted in Kosovo, with the sample of 24 female entrepreneurs. 21 questions of interviews are designed accordingly to the three research questions. The findings indicated that the majority of female entrepreneurs face difficulties on work–life balancing, but to overcome this challenge, they engage their family members on business activities and also, women who are married, especially those with more than one child have more difficulties on this aspect than those unmarried.

Fulfilling the gaps relied by previous studies and recommendations to female entrepreneurs in terms of better management of life and work simultaneously, it is considered the greatest contribution of this investigation.

This chapter describes the work-life balance project, which was the first to investigate the potential of clean language as an academic research interview methodology (Lawley, Meyer, Meese, Sullivan, & Tosey, 2010). It resulted in the publication of an article in the British Journal of Management (Tosey, Lawley, & Meese, 2014) that has since been cited in several academic papers, including Langley and Meziani's (2020) review of interview methodologies in the field of organisational change. This chapter describes the project's methodology and findings and highlights six lessons learnt that have helped to inform the further development of clean language interviewing.

Women who are the primary caretaker of the home, as a choice or as a necessity, have to negotiate an effective work-life balance and many times, the need to take care of their home results in lost opportunities for career development and advancement (Maki, 2015). For most, the opportunity to capitalize on the missed opportunities will occur after childbearing years (Maki, 2015). This study reconstructed the advancement to executive leadership of women who were employed at four-year, public universities using narrative inquiry and guided by the conceptual framework of social cognitive theory (Andrews, Squire, & Tamboukou, 2013; Bandura, 1989). In this study, six women in higher education were interviewed to discuss work-life balance as it pertains to being an executive leader of a four-year public institution. The participants of this study pinpointed family and work-life balance as important factors for their decision-making process. Balancing work and life can be challenging when you are a person in a leadership position and the degree of difficulty increases when children and family are included. Many women believe that they must choose between their careers and their family. Women postponing their careers for their spouses may not seem abnormal because there tends to be an expectation that male's advancement is prioritized over the woman's (Parker, 2015). As more women are taking on leadership roles, the idea and evolution of establishing and maintaining a strategy for work-life balance becomes a very integral topic and one that needs continuous exploration.

Purpose: Drawing upon the conservation of resources (COR) theory, the purpose of this chapter is to investigate the influence of supervisor family support (SFS) on job performance of employees through work and family demand, work-family conflict (WFC), work-life balance (WLB), job satisfaction, life satisfaction, and organizational commitment. In doing so, this chapter aims to respond to the limited existing research on WLB in the Australian financial industry, despite its substantial contribution to the economy. Study Design/Methodology/Approach: The study uses an online panel which recruits participants at different levels of financial organizations in Australia. The data comprise 305 employees to test a model with structural equation modeling. Findings: Results demonstrate that SFS relates positively to WLB and inversely to perceived family demand, WFC, and family-work conflict, with no significant link to perceived work demand. Findings show further that WLB associates positively with employee attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction, life satisfaction, organizational commitment). Results also demonstrate positive relations between employee attitudes and job performance. Finally, results show a significant positive relationship between WLB and job performance. Research Limitations/Implications: The survey data were collected from a single source (the financial industry) and from Sydney; therefore, the conclusions may carry less weight than those triangulated from multiple sources and across Australia. The variables were self-reported, which may leave the data subject to some response biases. Consistent with the past research, steps were taken to reduce single-source bias. Practical Implications: The results demonstrate that SFS is important in determining employee job performance in financial industry. It also highlights the role of work and family demand, WFC, WLB, and job attitudes. Originality/Value: The study would guide employers, employees, and managers involved in the financial industry to implement policies which may aim to augment job performance and promote balance between work, home, and life.

Most studies on work–life support at workplaces consider work–life balance to be a women’s issue, either explicitly or implicitly. This chapter analyses how fathers who are involved caregivers are supported or hindered in attaining work–life balance by their workplaces. It explores the following three questions: (1) why fathers value some job adaptations over others compared with mothers; (2) how organizational cultures influence the work–life balance of new fathers and (3) what differences exist across public and private sectors as well as large versus small companies. A qualitative approach with three discussion groups and 22 involved fathers enables us to explore these issues for large companies, public sector workplaces and small businesses. We find that tight time schedules, flextime, telework, schedule control and fully paid nontransferable leaves of absence constitute policies that favor involved fatherhood, while measures without wage replacement generate fear of penalization in the workplace and do not fit the persistent relevance of the provider role. In addition, un-similar supervisors, envy, lack of understanding and gender stereotypes among co-workers and clients constitute cultural barriers at the workplace level. Contrary to our expectations, small businesses may offer a better work–life balance than large companies, while the public sector is not always as family-friendly as assumed.