A Holistic Approach to Work-life Balance

• Lately there has been an increasing focus on how individuals balance their working life with their life outside work. The aim of the present study is to identify different working and living situations for women and men and compare them with regard to work-life balance. A holistic approach focusing on entire situations rather than specific variables is applied. The data in our study is representative of the Swedish citizens between 25 and 50 years of age. A survey was administered to a sample of appr 5000 individuals in 2004 and a follow-up was made in 2005 and 2006. In the present study a cluster analysis was performed using ten variables reflecting working conditions as well as living conditions. A thirteen cluster solution was chosen regarding both the homogeneity and the theoretical value of the solution, meaning that we found thirteen general situations describing the working and living conditions among workers on the Swedish labour market. Preliminary results indicate that there are large differences between these situations in how balance in life is reported. One conclusion is that the work-life balance is more favourable in situations common among both men and women than in more gender segregated working and living conditions. Another finding is that it seems as if individuals engaged in active jobs have difficulties upholding a good balance in life while individuals in situations characterised by for example low demands in general report a good balance.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Psychology

Psykologi

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)