Work-family conflict and career women home chores demand: Experience from two higher institutions in Ogun Sate, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined work-family conflict among career women from two higher institutions in Ogun state, Nigeria.  Respondents (52) were drawn from Federal College of Education (FCE) and Federal University of Agriculture,  Abeokuta (FUNAAB) through a simple random sampling technique. Structured questionnaire was used to elicit  information on respondents’ personal characteristics, conflicts that arise from the work-family conflict, work/home  chore demands experienced by the respondents and coping strategies adopted to reduce the stressors. Data were  subjected to frequency counts, percentages, means and one sample t-test. Results reveal that 34.0% and 37.7% of the  respondents were between 31 and 50 years, had at least NCE/OND qualifications (90.5%), married (94.3%) with  mean household size of 4 persons. Respondents’ lack of sufficient time to do home chores after work (mean = 3.06)  and strenuous nature of daily workload (3.46) were work-family conflicts identified by the respondents. Coping  strategies employed by the career women include planning ahead of daily tasks and workloads (mean = 2.78) and  giving priority to most important tasks and workloads (mean = 2.64). There was a significant difference between the  work-family conflict (t = 25.23, p<0.01) and work/home chore demand (t = 20.76, p<0.01) among career women in  FCE and FUNAAB. The study concludes that conflict exists between career women’s work and home chore  demands. It therefore recommended that career women should find a way to balance the conflict between work  demand and home chores.