Working from Home and Work-Family Balance: A Study of Women Educators during Lockdown

ABSTRACT

Covid-19 has had an overwhelming effect on lives and livelihoods alike. We have all embraced the new normal, including working from home, although it has come as an abrupt change. While not all jobs lend themselves to be shifted online, teaching is one profession that could witness such a change with relative ease. Technology eased the process, but it was not easy for those who had to do so, especially for women educators who faced very demanding sets of circumstances for managing work and home with limited domestic support. This paper attempts to study the impact of the mandatory lockdown on women educators, their work-life balance, and their experiences. The study was conducted in two phases, quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative phase was composed of 150 responses from women educators teaching online during the lockdown in PostGraduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) programs in Jaipur, India. Thirty respondents volunteered to participate in the qualitative phase, which was conducted using semi-structured in-depth interviews. Five themes emerged from the qualitative phase Structuring the home environment for work, workplace social support, personal social support, household structure, and feelings of isolation. There was substantial evidence backing up all these themes in the existing literature and this has been discussed comprehensively in the findings section. © 2021, Research Institute of Asian Women. All rights reserved.