Business-life balance and wellbeing: Exploring the lived experiences of women in a low-to-middle income country

AIM: With most studies on work-life balance focused on employees, this study sets out to explore the everyday living of business women who trade on petty goods and earn very little in a low-to-middle income country (LMIC). We explore their conceptions of balance, how they manage intersecting roles, and how they cope with daily hassles and stress to maintain wellbeing. BACKGROUND: With the proportion of self-employed to employed people in Sub-Saharan LMICs being an inverse of the situation in Euro-American countries, there is a need to explore what balance could mean for the people in LMICs. Most studies in the work-life literature have explored how employees pursue balance and the various strategies that work for a specific group of people. Perhaps because work-life balance literature has largely sprung from advanced economies, little focus has been placed on how other societies, especially people in LMICs, navigate balance, given their unique milieu. DESIGN: Adopting the reflective life-world approach, we inquire into the daily lives of women in very small businesses. METHOD: Twenty women who trade on a range of items and earn very little (gross daily sales of $0.41 to $62.98) were interviewed using a semi-structured guideline. Analysis was conducted using interpretative phenomenology. RESULT: Conceptions of balance for the women incorporated the notions of satisfactory progress across roles, proper time apportionment to roles, conditional balance as well as harmony and/or synchrony across roles—a slight difference from the popular understandings. Their conception of business life roles was deemed much more integral. Negative physical and psychological experiences impacting health and wellbeing, identified as culminating as a result of both roles, were commonplace but were typically considered a normal part of living. Engagements in extra-social roles appeared to have a double-edged effect. Placing the family first, time management, and prioritizing were some of the important measures of ensuring balance and wellbeing. Financial gains and personal satisfaction were top motivational reasons that kept the women committed to pursuing simultaneous roles. CONCLUSION: There is a strong overlap between what balance means for petty trading women and employees. However, the unique social platform offers a more communal perspective of issues in pursuing balance.