Author(s): Assiri, A., Al-Hashimi, M., Hamdan, A., Al Hamad, S., & Al-Sartawi, A.
Work-life balance is a fundamental concept that affects women globally and locally. Literature revealed that an effective work-life balance has substantial effect on women’s wellbeing, organizations’ welfare, strengthening family ties and altering society’s outlook on working women. It also discussed different factors that play a role in shaping the balance across home and work domains such as organizational factors, culture & society, and women’s self-perception. The study was designed to identify strategies to achieve work-life balance among working women by reviewing and analyzing the previous literature in the world, especially in Bahrain and the GCC region. The study concluded that women happiness is a construct of happy family, fulfilled personal life and job satisfaction as each of these elements were significantly related. The most substantial factors that drive to work-life imbalance are heavy workload, inflexible working schedule, gender inequality and inconsiderate manager of his employees’ personal and family matters. Accordingly, work-life balance is significant to women happiness and attaining work-life balance is a twofold obligation divided equally between employees and their organizations. The main strategies for enabling work-life balance are concerned with women changing their behavior and perspective across different aspects of their lives and the support of organizations mainly in terms of introducing and earnestly implanting family-friendly work policies.