Work-life conflict in Australian Muslims: Is gender important?

Purpose: This study aims to examine how working Australian Muslim men experience work-life conflict and how gender influences their experience.

Design/methodology/approach: Survey questionnaires were collected, either face-to-face or online, from 403 Australian Muslim men and women.

Findings: Work-to-life conflict is more prevalent than life-to-work conflict in both sexes, and there are no gender differences in the experiences of either direction of conflict. Job demands are a stronger predictor than work hours in both sexes and the findings corroborate existing Western research on the importance of work flexibility in helping both sexes cope with conflict. As expected, non-work related antecedents have more impacts on life-to-work conflict among women than in men, but the findings question the role of religion, indicating its beneficial rather than demanding nature. Finally, work-to-life conflict is a slightly stronger negative predictor of job satisfaction in women than men, whereas life-to-work conflict is a stronger negative predictor in men but not in women.

Research limitations/implications: A greater focus on the work-life experiences of non-traditional populations and a change in the direction of work-life research, one that is broadened to include other roles besides work and family, such as religion, are needed.

Practical implications: Workplace policies designed to mitigate the negative impact of work-life conflict need to be matched to the workforce for both the workers and workplace to gain full benefits.

Originality/value: This research broadens the scope of work-life knowledge, one that is predominantly based on Western societies on white, English-speaking backgrounds, to men and women of non-traditional minority populations.