Balancing work and family through social support among working women in Pakistan

Abstract

Work-family balance (WFB) is considered as one of the most important issues in organizational studies. The current study examines the relationship of social support (SS), employee performance (EP) and job satisfaction (JS) with work-family balance of working women in Pakistan. Based on cross - sectional data, out of 315 distributed questionnaires, 150 women working in different public and private sector organizations responded to the questionnaire, thereby resulting in a 47.6% response rate. The work-family balance through social support is a new concept, and as such, little evidence is available in the literature. The study aims to provide empirical grounds for the said relationship in a developing country. Independent sample t – test, Pearson’s correlation and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The study confirms that social support is moderately related to employee performance and job satisfaction and is strongly related to work family balance, whereas employee performance is moderately related to job satisfaction and has weak relationship with work family balance. The multiple regression analysis shows that social support and job satisfaction have a significant strong positive relationship with work family balance, whereas employee performance has a highly significant moderate relationship with work family balance of working women. Significant differences were found among the public and private sector working women with respect to social support, job satisfaction and work family balance. The relationships of independent variables such as social support, well performance at work and job satisfaction are contributors of work-family balance. However, the results are compared and discussed in the light of previous studies. Key words: Work-family balance, social support, job satisfaction, employee performance, working women, Pakistan.