Opinion: UK working women are managing the added pressures of juggling multiple roles and it’s having emotional repercussions
According to Oxfam , globally 75% of women shoulder the responsibility of unpaid work such as caring responsibility for children or elderly parents, cooking, cleaning and other domestic chores. This also applies to UK employed women, with data from the Office of National Statistics highlighting that in 2023, women spent on average three hours and 37 minutes daily on unpaid work, one hour more than men.
This is a continuing issue further showcased in recent research I conducted, which highlights women’s firsthand experiences of how they set about managing or attempting control over the pressures of when their home and work lives collide.
Balancing work and family life
My research comprised of 34 interviews, around 201 photographs captured by working women, depicting their experiences of nonwork role pressures during work or when at home.
Sacrificing lunch breaks at work to do household chores, having to take pay cuts/salary sacrifices due to childcare, utilising flexible working policies to take on more responsibilities at home, and struggling to get to work on time due to morning role conflicts such as dropping toddlers off at nursery, are just some of the role burdens women are having to take on, in addition to their professional requirements in the workplace.
Findings revealed that women relied on organisational support, but more so on self-initiated strategies as the additional tensions they faced to exert control over clashing role pressures with often negative emotional consequences.
Women were left creating the space themselves during or after work to minimise the tensions of when nonwork impacted work responsibility, or vice versa. As such, many were forced to adopt strategies such as separating from or combining roles, for instance merging work with childcare responsibilities or choosing to work out of hours and having to sacrifice leisure/time with family.
In addition, many of the women were often left self-initiating their own resources, including paying for child drop offs to enable them to juggle pressures of their various responsibilities, again with negative emotional consequences.
While experiences varied depending on women’s situations, regardless of the negative emotional consequences, women often felt they had to make decisions to protect their work role, which ultimately led to them having to separate or distance themselves from their role as a parent. Such actions of role control also produced positive emotions, revealing women’s commitment towards work.
Organisational policies however supported women to separate from work for priority family-time/responsibility. Although, where women chose family over work, there were long-term repercussions on workloads and, in many instances, women already lacked time for family, home responsibilities and leisure.
Encouraging open conversations in the workplace
The research solidified that the pressures of having to personally manage the tensions between work and life roles themselves are an additional burden that employed women across the UK are carrying. In many instances, it’s making it incredibly challenging for women to have any sort of balance in their lives.
The emotional consequences of the pressures the women we interviewed faced was significant. On many occasions it resulted in frustration and annoyance, thus highlighting a need to destigmatise this conversation to enable women to openly voice such concerns. Further encouraging transparency and creating an open dialogue in the workplace on the responsibilities women have outside of work, and the additional effort they themselves have to carry, could really address this issue and help alleviate some of this stress.
Providing women with a voice regarding the responsibilities they are balancing in their personal and professional lives, while also raising awareness of the burdens many working women face daily in dealing with role conflicts and the psychological consequences this can have is essential for women to achieve work-life balance.
While some workplace policies provide great levels of support towards work-life balance, others are perhaps counterproductive in alleviating some of the tensions women face between work and life as workloads have the potential to then mount even further.
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