This module has been developed in order to offer not only information, but in particular to offer tools for your personal self-assessment, reflection and self-development – both in your career and personal life.
Even though the module has been designed for scientists, it can also be helpful for people from administrative departments.
Please accept our invitation and find out more about Work Life Balance (WLB) – an area of our lives that is becoming more and more important.
Life is FluidYour best individual work-life balance may change over time and depends on different variables. |
What is Work Life Balance (WLB)?Maintaining a work-life balance is about separating your personal and professional lives without allowing one to encroach upon the other. Both are important, and neither should be neglected. |
What is Not Work-Life Balance?
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Do you want to know what CEITEC MU offers in order to build an inclusive working environment and to support your work-life balance?
Women in the EU accounted for only 33 % of researchers in 2011. There are signs of greater gender balance within the higher education sector, where women make up 41% of researchers (but only 34,2% in Czech Republic).
Within the European life sciences community, women equal or outnumber men at undergraduate, postgraduate and first postdoc stages. The stage at which the number of women drops dramatically coincides with the stage in the human life cycle when many people "settle down" with a long-term partner, establish connections in communities, and establish families. These expanding dimensions impose a challenge on the aspirational goal of achieving a healthy work-life balance.
Several studies indicate that this most negatively impacts women, partly, but not exclusively because they carry out a larger proportion of household and childcare tasks [1], and also negatively impacts their career advancement [2].
Qualitative studies show that women in medical and biological academic professions who felt they had control over their time, clarity of values and goals, and were able to set boundaries, experienced satisfaction in their careers, a condition which is likely to foster higher retention rates of highly skilled female researchers [3].
With its positive impact, improving work-life balance is thus beneficial, for both employees, and the employer.
[1] Benchmarking policy measures, ERA document, p. 32; Ledin et al, 2007 EMBO Reports Vol. 8; 982-987.
[2] National Research Council of the National Academies (2010), Gender differences at critical transitions in the careers of science, engineering, and mathematics faculty committee on Gender Differences in Careers of Science. The national academies PRESS Washington, D.C.
[3] Brown JB, Fluit M, Lent B, Herbert C. Seeking balance: the complexity of choice-making among academic surgeons. Acad Med 2011; 86: 1288-92; Kalet AL, Fletcher KE, Ferdman DJ, Bickell NA. Defining, navigating, and negotiating success: the experiences of mid-career Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar women. J Gen Intern Med 2006; 21: 920-5; Watt FM. Women in cell biology: how personal lives shape careers. Nature reviews, Molecular cell biology, Vol. 7, May 2006; 378-380.
The WLB module has been designed and implemented in frame of the LIBRA project (WP 5 Work-life Balance). This project has received founding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 665937. This web module reflects only the author’s view and the Research Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
