Paper short abstract:

Drawing on research with female domestic workers and employers in Lagos, Nigeria, this paper looks at women of different class backgrounds experiences of achieving a work-life balance.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on research with low-class female domestic workers and middle- to upper-class female employers in Lagos, Nigeria, this paper looks at women of different class backgrounds experiences of achieving a work-life balance. Specifically it explores the ways in which female employers are able to combine their work and career development with childcare, housekeeping, leisure, personal and social relationships by relying on 'others' - usually lower class domestic workers. At the same time, the attitudes and actions of employers support the underlying assumption that the domestic worker should mainly work and that entitlement to any other identity is not for them. Domestic employees are often expected to neglect their own care or leisure responsibilities in order to provide undivided attention to that of the employing household. This, coupled with the current unregulated status of this occupation in Nigeria and a context where the state does not fully guarantee workers' rights in areas such as maternity leave and working hours, constrains female domestic workers' attempts to organise or attend to their private and/or family concerns. As such, domestic workers have to juggle work commitments with family and domestic responsibilities, which are made even more difficult by their low-income status in an occupation that lacks decent labour conditions. Overall, the paper explores what work-life balance looks like for these two different groups of women based on an intersection of their gender with their class status.