Work-Life Balance Factors Influencing the Limited Presence of Women Chefs in Hotel Industry of Bengaluru

Abstract

For women, the difficulty of penetrating historically male-dominated occupations in every sector has always been difficult, and the fact that men are unwilling to accommodate them in those occupations that they dominate has made women to be relegated to the background. When women take up cooking in the professional arena, often they are met with countless challenges and limitations, one of them being the work-life balance. Besides balancing their family life, they face the issue of not being recognized of their calibre at work. Consequently, women chefs are still a rarity in the hotel industry, thereby mirroring the deeply ingraining social and cultural prejudice against women as being the ‘weaker sex’. For the purpose of understanding the contributing work-life balance factors towards the limited presence of women chefs within the hotel industry in Bengaluru, each of the individual factors were needed to be analyzed, specifically the extent of their relationship and influence. In the present study, a survey (N= 123) among women chefs working in the Hotel industry of Bengaluru is considered. The study finds that the women chefs are faced with problems in maintaining work-life balance due to several reasons including lack of organizational support leading to disturbed family life, diluted commitment and performance at work place, delayed marriage leading to frustration and family demands leading to expectations of support from peer group at work. Maintaining work-life balance was found to be of utmost importance for women chefs in order to enhance their performance at their workplace.