Over the past three decades, a lot has been said and written about work life balance and how much it impacts productivity for entrepreneurs. However, never has this concept been the focus of so much emphasis and these days management gurus are reexamining all their theories about work-life balance and restructuring them to reflect the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs. So what does the concept of work-life balance mean for women entrepreneurs in this fast changing social setup? We examine the reasons behind it.
It’s all about priorities
If a man fails to look after his home and spends late night at the office barking orders at employees, he would be dubbed a hard ass who is very driven. If a woman does the same, she’d be dubbed something like an ice queen and her femininity would be questioned. But for women entrepreneurs, balancing work and personal life is all about priorities and what aspect of their life needs more attention on a given day. Hence, they may happily give an important meeting a miss to attend a child’s ballet recital but may also forgo family weekends to wrap up a project.
Passion matters
Women entrepreneurs are more driven than their male counterparts. And this fact is largely a result of the fact that for them, the choice to own a business is more a question of making money out of something they love than purely making money because society expects them to bring home the bacon. And it is the same persuasion of passion that has female entrepreneurs successfully managing to have a personal life, running a household smoothly, looking after the kids and even maintaining healthy relationships with partners, girlfriends and family all the while managing a thriving business.
Contemporary women entrepreneurs are a product of the era
A woman who is an entrepreneur today is more likely to fall in the 28 years+ age group and a vast majority of these women are in their late 30s and early 40s. what this statistic represents is the fact that women who are entrepreneurs today have most likely witnessed the rise of feminism from the 1990s onwards and the kind of struggles women have had to make to gain acceptance and validation as being no lesser than male entrepreneurs. However, women still face a silent pressure to look after their home, pay attention to their husbands and kids and even have a private life despite working 80 hour weeks on their businesses. These women literally grew up watching female workers juggling work and personal life and many of them have raised their own kids while working full time. These few decades of juggling work and life often makes it ways for female entrepreneurs to balance work and life in comparison to male counterparts.
