The impact of social support on work-to-family and family-to-work conflict: An analysis on the female primary school teachers of Bangladesh

Abstract

Employed women usually face work-family conflict, as they need to maintain both the work and family responsibilities. In Bangladesh, a large number of educated women are employed as female teachers in the primary education sector. Like any other sector, these primary school teachers are also expected to have a significant amount of work-family conflict. Literature review suggests that social support, i.e. support from supervisor, co-worker, spouse, and family members can significantly reduce two types of work-family conflict; (a) work-to-family conflict and (b) family-to-work conflict. Based on this background the current study initiated to investigate how social support from supervisor, co-workers, life partner, and family members is associated with work–family conflicts in N = 90 female primary school teachers. A structured questionnaire was used as a mean primary source of data collection. Results revealed that spouse support and family support was negatively related with family-work conflict, though no negative relation were found between supervisor support and work-family conflict, and co-worker support and work-family conflict.