Factors Influencing the Discourse-Practice Gap in Work Life Balance (WLB) of Female Academia in Higher Education (HE) in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Work Life Balance (WLB) is the lack of opposition between work and other life roles or in other words concordance between work and other life roles. WLB is also known as the state of equilibrium in which demands of personal life, professional of working life and family life are equal. There are sufficient discourses to ensure WLB of people but when these discourses come into practice, there can be seen some gaps between WLB. Thereby the study focuses on the factors influencing the discourse-practice gaps in WLB of female academia in Higher Education (HE) of Sri Lanka. The study designed to identify, how the practices in HE supports or challenges the WLB discourses in aspects of Socio-economic, Political and Organizational. Therefore the problem of the research is to identify “what are the factors influencing the discourse-practice gap in WLB of female academia in HE of Sri Lanka”. The general objective of the study is to suggest some systematic ways to the administration to reduce the gap between discourse-practice WLB among female academia in HE of Sri Lanka while addressing the importance of WLB to each and every individual. The type of the study can be identified as a casual study rather than a correlational study where the study emphasized on identifying the most influence factors on WLB. The unit of analysis was at individual level, the female academia in HE of Sri Lanka from government universities. This study continues with 50 hand delivered questionnaire or online questionnaire accordingly to collect data. The cluster sampling method which is included to the probability sampling technique used as the method of sampling as all the universities are considered as equal or homogeneous from outside but unequal or heterogeneous from inside the cluster. Descriptive analysis, bivariate analysis, and advance analysis techniques were used to analyze data with the use of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), and Microsoft Excel. Employment, package of remuneration, social dialogue and social security has found as Socio-economic factors while academia’s rights considered as Political factors of WLB. The essential rights that are related with freedom of association, quality of work, practice of decent working hours, absence of unacceptable works and the nonappearance of enforced or abusive form of work are the factors of WLB that can be further categorized as Organizational factors of WLB. WLB is essential in each and every persons’ life. People tend to engage in the eventful day to day schedules and they are unconscious about the life activities other than the work. Thereby the significance of this study is as the study could reveal the most influence factors on WLB or in other words the causes of discourse-practice gaps in WLB of female academia in HE of Sri Lanka which helps to be conscious on those factors in order to ensure the WLB in their lives