Gambaran Work-Life Balance pada Wanita Single Parent yang Bekerja

Abstract

There has been an increasing number of female employees who are also single parents in Indonesia. Seeing that the number of single mother workers continues to grow, until now there has been no research on Work-Life Balance (WLB) in single mothers who work and become housewives. With such a high demand of responsibilities, one question to be raised was how those women balance between work and their own life (work-life balance, WLB). One previous WLB research used expatriates as its participants. One drawback was that research was not considered as gender specific. Besides, there is no WLB research on single working mothers. Hence, the aim of this study is to illustrate the issue of WLB among female employees who are also single mothers. This study used a qualitative method and used nine participants to explore the definitions, challenges, and support for WLB. One unique result is that single parent women with multiple roles whose children were still in the early childhood and middle childhood phases felt that they could balance between work and their life. Meanwhile, for a single parent woman who has a dual role whose child is already in the adolescence phase, feels that their work and personal life is not balanced. In sum, all participants were happy and comfortable with their lives, the presence of children, families, and a strong support system.