For this month’s Ask the Expert, we sought out the advice of YWA member Chela White-Ramsey, who has completed extensive research on the hard-to-obtain work-life balance.
After completing her bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D., White-Ramsey now works in the IT department for Travis County and recently launched her own freelancing business where she writes resumes, cover letters, and builds LinkedIn profiles for jobseekers. Her research interests include women of color, diversity in technology, and, of course, work-life balance.
Young Women’s Alliance: We all know the term work-life balance, but what does it really mean to have work-life balance?
Chela White-Ramsey: Work-life balance looks different for different people. My definition of work-life balance may not match yours. I think it has to do with striking an efficacious or successful balance between work responsibilities and non-work activities that positively impact your life. It’s a matter of dividing the energy that you spend doing work/non-work activities in a way that does not leave you feeling drained, but instead leaves you feeling productive and stress free.
YWA: Why is it important to have work-life balance?
CWR: There are several consequences to not having work-life balance. Research has shown that strain associated with a lack of work-life balance leads to insomnia; conflict between spouses, partners, and children; health and well-being issues; and unhealthy organizational attachment. It’s important to attempt to strike a balance between work and life to avoid the negative consequences that come along when we fail to do so. It’s also important to remember that it might not always look the way we want it to look. We may not always get the perfect family, the perfect high-achieving career, the perfect social life, and the perfectly healthy mind and body. Sometimes, these things fluctuate. All we can do is do the best we can in trying to achieve the goal.
YWA: What’s the No. 1 obstacle in achieving work-life balance?
CWR: I think there are many obstacles, and it’s hard to say which is the main culprit. For some people, a huge obstacle is socio-economic status and financial burdens that necessitate that they work long hours or multiple jobs to make a living wage. For others, it could be a special-needs child or cultural barriers that dictate that they spend more time in the home as opposed to focusing on career responsibilities. And for many of us, our No. 1 barrier to striking that balance lies within us: our inability to say no to extracurricular activities and projects, the way we buy in to societal expectations about what the perfect non-work life looks like, or the way we fail to engage in self care when we need to take a break. It’s important for every woman to take stock of her own life and decide what is holding her back.
YWA: What are steps women can take to achieve work-life balance?
CWR: Prioritize. Decide what’s important to you and what is not so important. Sit down and figure out what success looks like for YOU. What does a successful work life look like? What does a successful home life look like? What do these things look like for you? It could be a work-life balance in which you don’t take your work home with you — one that ends at 4:30 p.m. and picks up the next morning at 8:30 a.m.
After prioritizing, list behaviors that you can take to reach your goal. Maybe it might be to tell your boss that you need to scale way back for a little while — or for a long while. Or maybe you may need to drop one extracurricular obligation so that you can do something that you enjoy instead. Think about specific behaviors that can help you reach your goal.
Don’t forget to take care of yourself. At least one day per week should be dedicated to some sort of self-care activity. It could be an hour of barre class (which is what I like to do on Fridays), or it could be 3 hours of binge-watching mindless reality TV on Netflix while coloring in an adult color book (another one of my faves). Whatever it is, make sure it benefits you and it allows you to destress from the week.
YWA: Is there anything else you think people should know about your research or work-life balance in general?
CWR: I just completed a study that measured the work-family conflict (which is a determinant of work-life balance) for women who work in technology and whether or not their supervisors were more or less likely to provide family support to them based on some demographic characteristics. In my research, I found that employees who shared the same racial group as supervisors were more likely to receive family support whereas those who did not share the same race as supervisors were less likely to receive that same family support. There are several reasons for this, I’m sure, but I speculate that it may be due to the fact that supervisors and subordinates who share the same racial group are more likely to discover that they have other things in common. They self identify with each other on the basis of shared characteristics, and in turn, they are nice to each other.
Family support is important because it is key in reducing work-family conflict and increasing work-life balance perceptions. So to go back to the earlier question, another way people can increase their work-life balance is to make friends with their supervisors. They are more likely to cut you some slack, and that makes it a little easier for you to achieve work-life balance.
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Chela White-Ramsey is a native of Morgan City, Louisiana, and received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Louisiana State University. She furthered her education at the University of West Florida where she received a master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology and spent some time working in the organizational development field before returning back to LSU as a Huel Perkins Doctoral Fellow to complete her Ph.D.
