Women and Work-Family Interface: Indian Context

The social division of labour set the role of primary breadearnerfor the man while ascribed the role of home-manager andcaregiver to the woman. This arrangement has been questioned for having given rise to gender inequality and having generated gender role stereotypes for man and woman. The traditionally organized workplace is also predicated on the assumption that families with male bread winners and nonworking housewives constitute the predominant family form. This is no more true since the last few decades have seen a significant number of women coming out of the private sphere of domestic life to enter the public domain. The problem of balancing work and family together has given rise to what is called the ‘work-family conflict’, which has evoked serious scholarly concern in the last few years. The questions that havesurfaced need a sincere rethinking over. The present paper seeks to study work-family conflict in the context of women entering the workforce. However, this does not imply that work-family conflict is a ‘women’s problem’. Studies in the US and elsewhere have amply borne out that men face as much work-family conflict as women do. However, even this phenomenon stands pronounced with women entering the workforce as in the earlier arrangement, men had to worry little for the household responsibilities. Resultantly, there was less negative spillover from the work to family domain and vice versa.