Empirically Testing the Relationship of Social Support, Job Satisfaction and Work-Family Balance in Pakistani Socio Cultural Set-Up

Abstract

Healthy family life and organizational success depend upon balancing marital obligations and work responsibilities. Pakistan has joint family system, male dominant culture with religious overtones which do not have much space for females to enter the corporate world. The male is considered the head of family with the responsibilities of earning bread and butter. The highly educated female has representation at all walks of life including army and social sector but her prime responsibility is considered to look after family. Many educated girls, after completion of education do not enter in professional organizations due to cultural impediments, religious restrictions and social limitations. Working females are looked down upon and they are socially marginalized. In this scenario when female shares the economic burden with her male counterpart, her responsibilities are doubled, meeting her family tasks, keeping her husband happy and fulfilling organizational commitments. This paper examines the relationship of social support, job satisfaction and work – family balance among male and female employees in Pakistani socio-cultural setup. A random sample of 250 respondents working in private and public sector organizations has been taken. Reliability of the scales used in the questionnaire has been checked and found satisfactory. Independent sample t – test, Pearson’s correlation and Multiple Regression Analysis were used to get results. The study has revealed many interesting results including that male permit female and provides social support for work to avoid many family issues and problems caused by joint family system. They think, when female reach home after long day of hectic commitments, physically burnt-out, mentally exhausted, they find less time to get involved in family quarrels whereas female have to work hard to perform well at organizational environment, because this is the only outing opportunity they can avail to spend time out of depressed family surroundings. That’s among the many reasons they receive social support to work. In Pakistani cultural perspective the study gains significance and warrants further investigation as the results seemly stand anomalous to the perceptions in the male-dominated Muslim society.

Keywords: Gender, Social support, Work family balance, Pakistan