Abstract:
The number of women in the technology field in Sri Lanka is on the rise, but women in technical
jobs complain of struggling to have a balance of work and life (WLB) as they strive to meet the
demands of high performance and household women. This paper will look at the predictability
of perceived WLB on job satisfaction among female IT professionals in Sri Lanka in response
to the paucity of local evidence that is specific to women in technical roles. A cross-sectional
survey, conducted online was quantitative and involved 115 female IT professionals working
in various fields. WLB and job satisfaction were measured by validated Likert-scale questions.
Due to the composite scores, simple linear regression (job satisfaction as the dependent
variable) were to be used in order to analyze them. The correlation between WLB and the satisfaction
with the job was moderate and positive (r = 0.512, p < 0.001). In regression analysis,
the results show that WLB is a significant predictor of job satisfaction (b1 = 0.744, SE = 0.118,
t =6.335, p<0.001) with 26.2% of the variance (R2 =0.262, Adjusted R2 =0.256). Results of
this sample indicate that the enhancement of the working expectations, and conducive flexibility
can become the source of improved job satisfaction of women in Sri Lankan IT environments.
To illustrate this point, a simple predictive model (linear regression) was fitted to learn job satisfaction
based on WLB; performance on the test was moderate (R2 = 0.18), suggesting that
more organizational and personal predictors would probably be required.
