Professional Women Work - Life Balance Study

Currently in China, there is a large number of working women who arefaced with the great challenge to keep balance between work and life.Despite this widespread demand, there is little theoretic and empiricalresearch in China touching upon working women’s work-life balance.Therefore, it requires further study and development to enrich this researcharea.The main objective of this research lies in figuring out the historicalevolution of relations between working women’s work and life andanalyzing working women’s work-life state in China. Based on these, survey&research are carried out to explore factors impacting working women’swork-life balance and to build up theoretical relation modeling concerningfactors that cast influence on working women’s work-life balance.This research adapts both qualitative and quantitative methods. Throughliterature reviews, the emerging of working women is presented and thehistorical evolution of relations between working women’s work and life issorted out. Through questionnaire distribution, the work-life balance ofworking women in China is learnt and factors that have significantinfluences on working women’s work-life balance are analyzed and tested.The main conclusions of this dissertation include the following information:1. The evolution of relations between working women’s work and life can becategorized into four stages.2. The general work-life balance of workingwomen in Beijing is moderate.3. The degree of working women’s work-lifebalance varies inversely with balance difficulty and conflict frequency. Theworking women’s work-life balance difficulty varies directly with conflictfrequency.4. Based on the theoretical relation modeling built upon thisresearch, the significant factors that influence on working women’s work-life balance, balance difficulty and conflict frequency include:demographic dimension, e.g. unit nature; work dimension, e.g. working time,extra-working state, working pressure, whether work affects life and worksatisfaction; life dimension, e.g. whether personal time is not enough;concept dimension, e.g. whether one has experiences of giving up careerdevelopment opportunities and whether one wants to be a house wife. Apartfrom these, life satisfaction has significant influence on working women’swork-life balance and balance difficulty. Age, marital status and workingindustries as well as commuting time have great influences on workingwomen’s work-life conflict frequency. The recognition of factors likewhether family life disturbs work and women should give up careerdevelopment when there are conflicts between family and work haveimmense impacts on working women’s work-life balance difficulty.