Abstract
The main purpose of the study was to determine mainly work-life balance among female industrial workers in Onitsha, Anambra State. Specifically, the study sought to determine the influence of long working hours of female industrial workers on family meals in the family, the influence of female work-life balance with regards to family well being., the female work-life balance with regards to housekeeping services and the coping strategies employed by the female industrial workers to improve their work-life balance. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The study was carried out in Onitsha Anambra State. The population of this study was a total number of 2,540 women working in small and medium scale industries such as wool garment, hair dressing salon, tailoring shops and those working in bakery and confectionary industries. The sample for this study was 474 female industry workers. The sample size was determined using Yaro-Yamane formula for a finite population. Multi-stage sampling technique was adopted in this study. In the first stage, stratified random sampling technique was used to group the respondents into married and single, urban and rural, senior and junior workers, government and private owned industry working class women in Anambra state. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire developed by the researcher from literature based on the objectives of the study. The questionnaire was divided into five parts, A to E. The questionnaire is made up of 35 items divided into sections. The instrument has a four point rating scale with scoring range of point for point 1strongly agree, point 2 Agree, point 3 Disagree and point 4 Strongly Disagree. The instrument was subjected to face-validation by three experts from the Department of Home Economics Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Each validate was served with a copy of the instrument to ascertain the clarity, correctness and suitability of the items of the instrument. The researcher used their corrections, comments, suggestions, and amendments to produce the final copy of the instrument. To establish the reliability of the instrument, Twenty copies of questionnaire were trial tested on twenty home makers and teachers in Nnewi. Cronbach Alpha reliability method was used to establish the internal consistency of the instrument and it yielded the overall reliability coefficients of 0.85. The researcher administered and collected the instrument with the help of three research assistants. Some 474 copies of the questionnaire were returned duly completed and formed the basis of analysis. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions that guided the study while t-test statistic was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The finding of the study showed among others that female workers in the industry come home late from work to prepare their family meal, long working hours have great influence on family meal in families. The finding of the study showed that industrial female workers maintain unhealthy social life, have poor concentration for their spouse and children due to work and family imbalance and spend less time with their families. The finding of the study from the test of hypotheses showed that respondents from urban and rural areas did not differ significantly (p>0.05) in their opinion on their work life balance on family well being. It was found that there was no significant difference (p>0.05) in the mean response of senior female workers and junior female workers on their work-life balance as regards to their housekeeping activities. It was recommended among others that families should attend seminars, workshop and conference in order to gain adequate knowledge on how to integrate work and family life as part of everyday reality, industrial policy makers should make flexible policies that will avail the female workers opportunity to attend to non-work demands with minimal interference in work roles and Government should create a sensitization programme for the general public especially the female industrial workers that will expose them to some coping strategies especially during stressful conditions.