Transcript Group Membership and Social Trust as Aspects of Social

The Issue of Work-Life Balance
in Bulgaria
Siyka Kovacheva
University of Plovdiv
Bulgaria
During communism
 The issues of integrating work and family life
were largely absent from public discourse.
 The official ideology stressed woman’s triple role
in society: productive worker, selfless wife and
mother, and devoted participant in public
(political) events.
 Women worked full time and the decline of the
birthrate since the 1960s prompted the creation
of a network of public kindergartens and the
introduction of paid maternity leave.
During the transition after 1989
 The dominant anti-state ideology proclaimed the
the end of all privileges (including those for
women under state family policy).
 With the rising unemployment there was an
increased pressure for a retreat to more
traditional gender roles presented as ‘expansion
of choices’.
 Places in public childcare declined, child benefits
lost their value and the parental leave was further
prolonged.
Quality of Life Study in Bulgaria
 Part of the comparative research project ‘Quality
of life in a changing Europe’
 Paper-based survey (spring 2007) at four
companies (bank, hospital, supermarket,
telecom) with 789 respondents
 In-depth interviews with managers and focus
groups with working parents
 biographical interviews with selected men and
women
The concept of work-life balance
 Social construct of the combination of
individual’s multiple roles in different life
domains.
 Not only individual perception of being able to
manage one’s roles in a self-fulfilling way but
also wider social influences from households,
companies, welfare state.
 Not only negative (lack of conflict) but also
positive interface (enrichment).
 Bi-directional influence – from work to family life
but also from family care to paid work.
Indicators of work-family balance

Stress from work and family life
 Work-family interference
 Work-family enrichment
 Satisfaction with work-family balance
figure 2 Satisfaction work life balance
60
50
Retail
40
Telecom/IT
30
Hospital
Bank/Insurance
20
10
Countries
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Fi
% employees satisfied
70
The institutional context
 Long working hours for both men and women 40.5 average number of working hours per week
 Low flexibility of work (2.5% working part-time
and 6.4% working from home)
 410 days paid parental leave (at 90% of the
earnings) plus 1 year parental leave paid at a
fixed sum plus one year unpaid leave
 Parents can take up to 60 days for paid leave to
care for a six child.
 Difficulties finding a place in public kindergartens
and especially crèches.
The organizational context
 Companies did not provide work-family policies in
addition to the statutory measures.
 Employees tended to reduce the use of family
policy to express loyalty to the company
 Cost-efficiency as dominant concern in
organisational cultures, informal social capital as
most important for working parents.
 OLS regression showed a strong negative impact
of job insecurity and working overtime at a short
notice and a positive impact of team work and
work autonomy.
The family context
 Satisfaction with household income, health of
family members, availability of childcare and
understanding partner contributed to WFB.
 Having an unemployed partner at home had a
negative impact on WLB. The number of children
did not make a difference.
 Both partners working full time with men expected
to invest more in career and women more in
unpaid care at home.
 The practice of high support with childcare from
the extended family.
Individual strategies
Policy implications
 Holistic integrated approach of the policy in
support of work-life balance and quality of life
 Flexible measures fitting diverse individual and
family situations
 Greater involvement of trade unions and parental
organizations in the development of these policies
 Programmes encouraging real social equality
(many measures reproduce traditional gender
inequalities)
 Concerted efforts to influence societal,
organizational and individual values to
acknowledge the interdependency between quality
of work and quality of family life.