Abstract
Orientation: The conflicting demands of work and family contribute to individual stress levels, particularly for women because of gender stereotypes. The male-dominated and pressured environment of manufacturing and gendered expectations at home exacerbate of stress for women manufacturing managers.
Research purpose: The study aimed to explore the gendered expectations of female managers in the manufacturing industry in South Africa and how they cope with resulting stress.
Motivation for the study: Limited research has been conducted on the gendered expectations of female managers in the South African manufacturing industry, including stress experienced due to work–family conflict (WFC) and coping mechanisms for managing this stress.
Research approach/design and method: A qualitative research approach was adopted, with a sample of 14 female managers from South African manufacturing organisations. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews.
Main findings: Female manufacturing managers’ stress is linked to the patriarchal working environment, compounded by the lack of support for the ‘double burden’ of work and family responsibilities. Generally, female managers resort to unsustainable coping mechanisms rather than permanent solutions.
Practical/managerial implications: The study revealed structural problems within the manufacturing industry, which, unaddressed, will result in women increasingly pursuing more accommodating industries, depriving manufacturing organisations of much-needed female talent.
Contribution/value-add: The study acknowledged the call for cross-national work on WFC and makes a unique contribution by focusing on gendered expectations in the male-dominated sector of manufacturing in South Africa.
Keywords: work–family conflict (WFC); stress; gendered expectations; work interfering with family (WIF); family interfering with work (FIW); manufacturing industry.
Introduction
It is widely acknowledged that the conflict between work and family is a significant factor in people’s stress levels and overall well-being. Managing this relationship is generally believed to be more challenging for women than for men, primarily because of gendered expectations.
At the intellectual level, there appears to be broad acceptance that women play a critical role in society – both as caregivers and as active members of the labour force (Folbre, 2018; Power, 2020). However, from a social justice perspective, there has been little transformation in how the care economy is viewed. Large numbers of women throughout the world still spend a considerable amount of time performing domestic duties while also engaging in paid work – which has spawned the term ‘double-shift worker’ (Power, 2020). This double burden of responsibility has contributed significantly to the stress experienced by women in society.
The literature frequently contends that women are more likely than men to report physical and emotional exhaustion from paid work (Artz et al., 2022). This has become particularly acute in the post-pandemic era (Thomas et al., 2021). The World Health Organization (WHO, 2022) reports that women are 50% more likely than men to report depressive and anxiety disorders during the course of their lives.
The male-dominated manufacturing industry is a particularly challenging environment for women. Women are expected to deliver a consistently high level of performance and to always be emotionally and physically engaged despite their disproportionately heavy family commitments (Agarwal, 2022; Han et al., 2020). The manufacturing industry’s entrenched legacy of gender stereotypes, inflexible working environments and lack of support make the work–family interface particularly complex for women (Tabassum & Nayak, 2021). Moreover, researchers continue to overlook the contribution of women to the industry, perpetuating their marginalisation (Metters & George, 2024). The stress experienced by South African women is unusually complex, as it is infused with racial, socio-economic and cultural factors and shaped by the divisive apartheid era which gave rise to its own brand of patriarchy (Adedeji et al., 2023; Wessels, 2020). The contextual experience of South African women in leadership roles and specifically the demands female managers face in the manufacturing industry calls for further research on stress and gendered expectations (Bosch & Booysen, 2021; Carrim & Nkomo 2016; Poltera & Schreiner, 2019).
This study explores female managers’ experience of stress – induced by the contradictions and conflicts characterising their dual (work–family) responsibilities – within the context of the high-performance and male-dominated manufacturing industry in South Africa. Specifically, the study probes the gendered expectations from both work and family perspectives, the stress created from managing these expectations, and the coping mechanisms that female managers employ to mitigate such stress.
Literature review
Stress among managers in the workplace
For the purpose of this study, stress is defined as environmental events that act on an individual and strain their ability to respond, leading to outcomes such as exhaustion and depression (Bliese et al., 2017; Gonzalez-Mulé et al., 2021; McCarthy et al., 2019). Much of the literature on workplace stress focuses on the impacts at an employee or individual level (McCarthy et al., 2019), with the stress experienced by managers within a manufacturing context receiving little attention (Els et al., 2021).
Two fundamental frameworks that are used to understand workplace stress, which deviate from the traditional individual perspective and adopt a more contextual approach, are the conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 2001) and the job demands-resource (JD-R) model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017). Both frameworks have prompted studies highlighting how threats to the securing of resources (either real or perceived) result in workplace stress.
Lin et al. (2021) expanded on the COR theory, explaining that an individual whose resources are threatened might feel that they are losing control, which induces stress. The JD-R model highlights the sustained physical and mental effort and costs involved in managing the interaction between job demands and resources (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017; Ten Brummelhuis & Greenhaus 2018). These can be experienced as challenge stressors, such as concentration requirements, a heavy workload and time constraints or hindrance stressors, such as role conflict and role ambiguity (Ford et al., 2007; Gonzalez-Mulé et al., 2021). Challenge stressors can positively impact and promote personal achievements, while hindrance stressors negatively impact the prospects of personal achievement (Gonzalez-Mulé et al., 2021).
Various studies on workplace stress have drawn attention to the specific job demands of managing within a volatile socio-political and economic environment and complex organisational context. Eddleston et al. (2019) describe the manager’s role as ‘being in a pressure cooker’ because they need to drive performance, devote long hours to executing their roles and be the first at risk if targets are not met. This pressure has intensified recently in the wake of technology-enhanced remote working models, which have made it more difficult for people to ‘switch off’ during nonworking hours (Eddleston et al., 2019; Rapp et al., 2021). While managerial stress can encourage adaptive coping and prosocial behaviour, it is largely considered to have negative outcomes, such as emotional exhaustion, poor interactions with others and even hostile relationships with subordinates (McCarthy et al., 2019).
Kossek et al. (2021) identified the hostility permeating a male-dominated work environment as a key contributor to stress and highlighted that little is known about how women manage the experience of hostile cultures. Shockley et al. (2017) assert that a gender-dominated environment, such as manufacturing, induces an additional layer of stress for the least-represented gender.
In general, there have been shifts globally within manufacturing organisations to adopt a more human-centred approach towards employees (Barclay, 2018; Lu et al., 2022), and many operational management systems in manufacturing emphasise employee empowerment and development (Hernandez-Matias et al., 2020). However, the pressure on the role of managers in high-performance, competitive manufacturing environments has received less focus, and the gendered implications of the male-dominated legacy of manufacturing are still being understood.
Gendered expectations at work: The manufacturing context
A significant amount of research has been conducted on the prescriptive nature of gender ideologies and the generalisations born out of bias and stereotypes, as opposed to individual characteristics (Kaya & Kaya, 2022; Metters & George, 2024; Wessels 2020). Typically, these yield the binary stereotypes of communal prescriptions of women as nurturing, caring, emotionally expressive and affectionate and agentic prescriptions of men as dominant, independent and confident (Tabassum & Nayak, 2021). These stereotypes manifest in the workplace, with women broadly assumed to be less capable than men in the same roles (Quadlin, 2018; Tabassum & Nayak, 2021). Women who work in this sort of environment often resist displaying femininity and instead feel pressure to adopt more masculine agentic behaviours in order to succeed (Banchefsky & Park, 2018; Quadlin, 2018).
Manufacturing organisations are premised on the ‘ideal man’, who can work long hours without domestic responsibilities. Workplaces that regard long working hours as a sign of commitment usually disadvantage women because of the widespread and culturally entrenched gendered belief that caregiving is a woman’s responsibility (Pedulla & Thébaud, 2015). While more women have entered male-dominated industries for paid work, the burden of unpaid care work remains the primary responsibility of women (Power, 2020). Indeed, many women benefit from performing multiple roles. Yet the way a woman experiences the expectations linked to her multiple roles depends on the confluence of the national context, personal norms and values and the organisational climate (Adedeji et al., 2023; Beham et al., 2017).
Gendered expectations in the family: The South African context
A family’s dynamics are informed by the combined cultural constructs of that family, which in turn may influence gendered expectations. While culture has a strong link to gender-based role prescriptions, it is a complex and often contested concept (Ali et al., 2020; Beham et al., 2017). For example, people from collectivist-oriented cultures generally tolerate intrusions in their lives for the greater good of their families. As a result, women from these cultures tend to overextend themselves in their roles at home (Allen et al., 2020), foregoing their own needs to keep everyone else happy.
In their study on the cultural constructs of individualism and collectivism, Laher and Dockrat (2019) described the South African culture as primarily collectivist, driven by speakers of African languages. This contradicts the original assertion by Hofstede (1984) that South Africa displayed an individualist orientation, which was the result of research conducted primarily with English- or Afrikaans-speaking male managers who reflected Western cultural values. In a study on South African Indian female managers, Carrim and Nkomo (2016) highlighted the complexity of racial and gendered identity within families and communities, which has influenced the expectations of managers in the workplace.
Work–family conflict theory
The concept of work–family conflict (WFC) has been of interest to researchers for many years, and in the post-pandemic era, the phenomenon is arguably even more potent, given the growing trend towards technologically enabled, 24-7 global workplaces (Allen et al., 2020). In the WFC arena, there is growing interest in the impact of various demographic factors, including gender, and the stress caused by the intersection between such factors. Work–family conflict has been empirically tested against Western culture, but other espoused cultural values still need to be better understood (Zhang et al., 2012).
The domains of work and family are key constructs that readily influence each other (Lavner & Clark, 2017), giving rise to the cross-domain theory of family interference with work (FIW) and work interference with family (WIF) (Gutek et al., 1991). Women are theorised to have more ‘permeable’ domains than men and therefore experience interference more frequently (Shockley et al., 2017). The interference construct of conflict frequently triggers spillover (Voydanoff, 2005), where the individual experiences higher workloads in either or both domains, exacerbating their stress. The consequences of spillover can be poor relationships, negative personal and work outcomes and interference with ‘normal’ family functioning (Booth-LeDoux et al., 2020; Gutek et al., 1991; Lavner & Clark, 2017; Shockley et al., 2017).
Shockley et al. (2017) quantitatively tested the WFC model to show how the following factors (which in some cases are gendered) impact an individual: hours devoted to work and family (time), intrusions from work and family (salience) and ability to create boundaries between work and family (permeability). Their study revealed three perspectives on FIW experiences.
Firstly, women commonly experience FIW in relation to time, while men spend more time at work and experience WIF (Ford et al., 2007; Gutek et al., 1991; Shockley et al., 2017). Secondly, in terms of the salience perspective, time alone will not result in interference; rather, gender will determine what is tolerated (Gutek et al., 1981, 1991). Thirdly, boundary theory is concerned with the cognitive, physical and behavioural boundaries between an individual’s work and family domains, with boundary strength being the ability to separate the two (Rapp et al., 2021). How individuals create, maintain or change boundaries to simplify the world around them has a direct bearing on the stress they experience (Rapp et al., 2021) and, according to Shockley et al. (2017), is often gendered.
Work–family conflict and stress
In the case of stress induced by WIF or FIW, the domain spillover can compound the stress, leading to the ‘double bind’ (Carlson et al., 2018). Social role theory explains how a woman who admits to not being able to cope adequately with the demands of both work and family will create the impression of inadequacy, thus jeopardising her chances of promotion (Carnes, 2017; Shockley et al., 2017). It is also likely that a woman will try and manage the multiple demands on her time and energy by making personal sacrifices from a resource perspective while still trying to maintain a positive image at work or at home. Faced with a resource drain, a woman experiences stress and is at risk of performing less effectively, as asserted in the COR theory (Carlson et al., 2018; Gonzalez-Mulé et al., 2021).
Stress theories relating to role expectations posit that women appraise role expectations and role overload much more harshly than men. Thus, stressful experiences are more intense for women and can give rise to mental health issues, such as burnout, depression and anxiety (Gonzalez-Mulé et al., 2021; Li et al., 2021).
Stress-coping mechanisms
Individuals continually evaluate their work and family demands against their available resources, which triggers coping mechanisms to manage resource drain and mitigate stress (Bakker & De Vries, 2021). Bakker and De Vries (2021) contend that it is normal for people with high job demands to engage in activities after work that allow them to recover from the day’s pressures. Recovery strategies can be not thinking about work after hours (psychological detachment); engaging in low-activity pursuits; learning something new, as a challenge and positive stimulant; and exercising control over nonwork time (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2007).
Social support is a problem-focused coping mechanism that involves seeking resources to alleviate the experience of WFC (French et al., 2018; Ten Brummelhuis & Greenhaus, 2018). Social support activities can be grouped into the following categories: emotional (such as love and care), appraisal (such as alternative ways of looking at the strain being experienced), informational (such as advice on how to avert the source of the strain) and instrumental (such as practical steps to alleviate the strain) (French et al., 2018).
While many contend that coping mechanisms are adopted at an individual level, organisations also have a role to play in providing resources to employees who are experiencing strain, such as letting them work from home so that they can spend time with a sick child (French et al., 2018).
Research design
Research approach
A qualitative paradigm was adopted for this study to gain a deeper understanding of the ‘lived experiences’ (Alase, 2017) of South African female managers in a manufacturing context and their WFC challenges.
An interpretivist philosophy allowed for the consideration of individual differences, such as gender-based experiences and cultural and familial characteristics, and how these informed personal experiences of domain conflict and stress (Creswell & Poth, 2016). A semi-structured interview was used to facilitate a ‘conversation with a purpose’ with female managers drawn from a range of organisations in the South African manufacturing industry. The interpretivist phenomenological approach (IPA) applied to the data analysis considered the participants’ perceptions of the phenomenon of gendered expectations, role conflict and stress in relation to their personal experiences (Shinebourne, 2011). An inductive process was used to allow for concepts and theory to be formulated and eventually combined into themes (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015).
Participants and sampling methods
The study population comprised female managers in full-time positions in the manufacturing industry in South Africa. Further selection criteria were that they held middle to senior management positions, with at least one person reporting to them, and also had family-related responsibilities (immediate or extended families).
Non-random purposive sampling was used together with snowball sampling to identify participants with experience of the research phenomenon who met the criteria (Creswell & Poth, 2016). The researcher used personal networks to recruit the first three participants and further participants were recruited through network referrals. Potential participants were contacted by e-mail and given an outline of the study before agreeing to participate in an interview. The sample of managers were recruited from various subsectors within the manufacturing environment, including automotive and consumer goods. Given the South African context, it was important to ensure that the sample’s demographics were representative of women from a range of cultural, racial and ethnic backgrounds. The final sample size for the study was 14 participants, with the racial split being five African people, four Indian people, two White people and two mixed race people.
Data collection
A semi-structured interview guide was prepared to facilitate the consistent gathering of data (Alase, 2017). The guide was pilot tested on two trial participants and amended after each trial to reduce the risk of question ambiguity.
Data analysis
The researcher was herself a female manufacturing manager who had personally experienced stress from gendered, dual-role expectations (Alase, 2017). She was therefore aware that the data analysis process was potentially prone to bias. She sought to identify and monitor these biases by including notes about her personal feelings and interpretations in the summary write-up of each interview (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015).
Following the cleaning of the data from the transcripts and audio recordings, the analysis involved three stages, in line with the IPA process: coding and categorisation, condensing and theme formation (Alase, 2017). Saturation was achieved after interview 13, with only 1 new code emerging from interview 13 and no new codes emerging from interview 14. The coding was done using the ATLAS.ti software package. The codes were categorised according to common meanings, and the categories were then organised into themes (outside of ATLAS.ti) and linked to specific subquestions in the interview guide.
Strategies employed to ensure data integrity
The integrity of the data was assured by conducting an audit trail, which relied on detailed record-keeping and the furnishing of reasons for the researcher’s decisions (Meadows & Morse, 2005). Computer-assisted data analysis was undertaken, and the researcher had regular discussions with her supervisor to ensure that the process, as it unfolded, remained reliable.
Ethical considerations
The Ethics Review Committee of the South African University through which the research was conducted provided the necessary ethical clearance for the research. Data were solicited with written permission from participants, who were informed that they could withdraw from participation at any time. Data were stored without identifiers to ensure anonymity.
Results
Each research question gave rise to a series of primary and secondary constructs, which were grouped as themes and given frequency values to identify the predominance of each theme. The following themes emerged through the data analysis and are discussed in detail as follows:
- Gendered expectations in the family were varied, ranging from leadership, relationship and gender-neutral roles.
- Gendered expectations in the workplace were common and experienced as both implicit and explicit.
- Work interference with family commonly resulted in stress relating to emotional exhaustion, emotional unavailability and identity dissonance.
- Family interference with work was varied, predominantly experienced as competition for resources of time, mental and emotional energy.
Gendered expectations in the family
From the interviews, it was clear that the participants’ family roles were varied, with some having leadership roles in the home, some relationship-related roles and some gender-neutral roles.
Having a leadership role in the home meant that the woman was in charge of all decisions pertaining to household-related activities or executed (in a practical sense) all the activities in the home, including financial management in some cases. According to (Participant 3, 35 years old, African person), ‘I am the chief operations executive; I make things happen’.
Having a relationship-related role meant that the woman managed various home networks – as a mother, wife, extended family member and friend. (Participant 11, 42 year old, White person) explained, ‘I have to always arrange the social gatherings for everyone to spend time together’. Some of the participants who played a relationship-related role admitted that they did so because of a gendered expectation; others said they were not driven by such an expectation.
Having a gender-neutral role meant that the woman did not conform to any perceived norms or expectations. She shared roles with her spouse or alternated between different roles if resource constraints warranted it. (Participant 9, 43 years old, Indian person) said, ‘My role at home is a very healthy split between my husband; it depends on what is available’.
The reported roles of the participants were further analysed for evidence of any racial–cultural influences. While white and mixed race participants had varied roles in the family, Indian and African participants largely had leadership roles that were either of the emotional type or the decision-making or practical execution type. Moreover, most African and Indian participants experienced gendered role expectations in their families because of their cultural background, societal pressure and upbringing (parental and family influence), while the white and mixed race participants generally did not experience gendered role expectations.
The participants were also asked questions about how they coped if the demands placed on them exceeded their available resources. Participants initially tried to juggle their responsibilities without asking for help although this invariably produced suboptimal results. Some participants did online shopping to save time or went to bed late to build more hours into the day. All the participants facing gendered expectations agreed that they found it difficult asking for social support. Only after enduring extreme stress for an extended period might they feel compelled to ask their spouses or other family members and friends for help. For example, (Participant 4, 32 years old, African person) said, ‘I had to put my foot down and say, I am not coping, and you [the spouse] need to start helping out with this’.
In contrast, those participants who faced no gendered expectations did not find it difficult performing their family role. Alternatively, they readily sought help if they felt they needed it. Seeking spousal support was their first coping action in the face of resource overload. As (Participant 1, 37 years old, African person) pointed out, ‘It’s a negotiation with my husband, but mostly then having to deal with mum guilt if I cannot make something for the kids’. However, some of the participants in egalitarian households reported feeling societal pressure to behave in a certain way. For example, ‘Teachers expect me to be there on the teacher–student night, and when it is the children’s dad, there are murmurings about me always working’ (Participant 7, 33 years old, Indian person).
The aspect of upbringing was further explored through questions about culture-based gender expectations. One of the African participants (12) with a Zulu heritage shared how her mother’s patriarchal views had been instilled in her: ‘You should be doing your role, the helper is there to assist you. You still need to fulfil your wifely duties, make sure your husband is taken care of and don’t neglect your kids’. An Indian participant (6) commented:
‘Your parents expect this and your in-laws expect that, and they expect you to have a successful career and still manage domestic chores and take care of your husband, but household expectations are always still there.’ (Participant 6, 41 years old, Indian person)
There were also claims of gendered expectations being shaped by wider societal and cultural norms. (Participant 12, 32 years old, African person) shared, ‘It’s always been the case for Zulu culture that as a man you work and that’s fine, and the women will do everything else’. From the different responses it was evident that the African and Indian female managers still faced the most gendered expectations because of cultural influences, with the white and mixed race female managers experiencing far less. Furthermore, African and Indian female managers were doing the most to ‘unlearn’ habits by breaking entrenched stereotypes and transitioning towards a fairer distribution of work in their households.
Gendered expectations in the workplace
In contrast to their varied experiences of their role in the family, most participants indicated that they faced gendered expectations in the manufacturing environment. Two prominent themes emerged in this regard: the participants faced an implicit patriarchal judgement bias and an explicit judgement bias that shaped expectations of their role in the male-dominated workplace.
Those who reported experiencing an implicit patriarchal judgement bias had a sense of being excluded and/or judged according to a different set of intangible measures or standards from those that were applied to their male counterparts. Participants often felt guilty about displaying their family domain role when they were at work. According to Participant 11, ‘Things like attending to sick kids should be normal; instead, they are judged’. Moreover, participants reported that care economy activities were either not acknowledged or were shunned. For example, ‘I would use my lunch break to pump the breast milk in a change room and eat at the same time’ (Participant 10, 28 years old, White person).
Those who reported experiencing an explicit patriarchal judgement bias felt that they were automatically assigned certain tasks because of their gender or were given feedback on how they should or should not behave in the workplace. (Participant 8, 35 years old, Indian person) said, ‘I always have to do the planning and organising of social things because they say I am a woman’. Another participant remarked, ‘They say I am too soft’ (Participant 1, 37 years old, African person).
Only three participants indicated that there were no (or almost no) differences in the expectations of women and men in the workplace; nor did these participants experience any gender expectations regarding their role in the family – which could have been attributable to the immunising effects of their particular upbringing and mindset.
Work interfering with family
All participants reported that their work-related expectations spilled over into their family role and resulted in stress. Most participants spoke of work interfering with family (WIF), leaving them emotionally exhausted and with a feeling of never being able to switch off. (Participant 2, 39 years old, African person) said, ‘Since manufacturing is a 24/7 operation, I am always waiting for something to happen to take me away from home’. Many of the participants said that they felt guilty about neglecting their family responsibilities (because of a lack of time) and being emotionally unavailable. Work interfering with family was also evident in the amount of time that participants spent at work. (Participant 14, 35 years old, Coloured person) remarked, ‘There is never enough time for myself, and I use the weekends to catch up with family and work’.
Most participants acknowledged that it was impossible to create definitive boundaries between their family and work roles, with some adding that there was dissonance experienced in performing their roles. For example, they had to be the tough, strong manager in the workplace and the softer, more understanding spouse at home.
Work interfering with family did, though, provide some positive learning experiences. Participant 9 acknowledged that WIF had improved her leadership style at home, while another saw that her children had become more independent in the face of her work demands:
‘I don’t have time to do their homework step by step. I only have time to check the last and they need to learn, but that’s not a bad thing.’ (Participant 9, 43 years old, Indian person)
Family interfering with work
The participants had varying experiences of FIW, with the most common theme identified as the difficulty of trying to juggle working hours and family responsibilities. Participant 3 said, ‘I feel uncomfortable to tell my male colleagues that I need to go make supper now; they don’t get it as they arrive [home] to a hot meal’. Some participants had self-imposed expectations of being perfect mothers, which translated into feelings of guilt in the workplace. Admittedly, though, one of the participants was able to take the nurturing, caring leadership style that she practised at home into the workplace – ultimately to good effect.
Family was also perceived to interfere with work by way of resource spillover, which refers to competition for resources, including physical items, time and mental and emotional energy. The experience of FIW was less common than WIF, though, which might have been because the participants valued their family role more and did not perceive it as interference. (Participant 5, 40 years old, White person) remarked, ‘I have family interruptions, but it doesn’t interfere with my work role.’
Stress from work interfering with family or family interfering with work
An overall finding was that participants’ most stressful experiences were linked to their working in manufacturing with its high-intensity and patriarchal culture.
The most prominent construct of stress was gender bias in a male-dominated work environment, where the participants felt that they constantly needed to prove themselves. For example, ‘My manager always calls me out and compares me to my male colleagues in terms of how I can do it better’ (Participant 6, 41 years old, Indian person). Maintaining credibility despite gender-related responsibilities outside of work contributed to their stress. (Participant 8, 35 years old, Indian person) reported, ‘I need to prove myself because when my kid is sick, people need to believe me when I leave the office early, and that is just so stressful’. Interestingly, more than half the participants acknowledged that they wished to act as role models for other women. Participant 6 said:
‘I want to set an example for the other females. We have two other female engineers, and they’re young. They’re impressionable, and I don’t want them to go through what I’ve had to go through. So, I’m trying to set an easier path for them.’ (Participant 6, 41 years old, Indian person)
The next construct was dealing with conflict. All of the participants found conflict with colleagues more stressful than conflict with family members. Another construct was how to prioritise resources in the face of a finite amount of time and energy to perform tasks, such as looking after small children while catching up on work at home or trying to honour family commitments when work demands unexpectedly intruded in their home life.
The last construct of stress was the job itself, such as being under constant pressure to perform optimally and meet customers’ needs, without the luxury of any emotional downtime. (Participant 10, 28 years old, White person) remarked, ‘In manufacturing, I am always switched on, always pushing, they always want improvement’. Another referred to the volatile nature of the environment: ‘The manufacturing role is the most demanding, everything can be going right, and the next minute it’s not’ (Participant 5, 40 years old, White person).
Coping mechanisms to manage stress
Among the personal coping mechanisms reported were relaxation, exercise, informal (personal) coaching and spiritual pursuits although some participants admitted that they were not sure how they should go about coping with stress. Many participants experienced no organisational support when it came to stress management. Where support was offered, they viewed it as superficial (merely ‘lip service’) and of little benefit.
While the participants discussed a variety of coping mechanisms, the general consensus was that the one activity that enabled them to decompress was spending time alone. They could put their feet up, enjoy a glass of wine, watch TV, do journalling, engage in solo sport, spend time in nature, meditate or simply reflect quietly.
Most participants said that their immediate family was unable to help them when they were stressed. Less than half the participants said that they sought to manage stress by sharing their experience with their spouse or children, by asking members of their extended family for assistance with child-related duties or by soliciting additional resources in the form of paid domestic help.
Discussion
A key finding from this study was that several of the women experienced gendered expectations, which they attributed to their cultural background and upbringing. Indian and African women were noted to have more domesticated roles than White and mixed race women and thus assumed the leadership of most house-specific tasks. All those participating in the study played multiple roles in their family, with each one linked to the care economy, including mother, household manager and leader of the home. However, some women reported no difference in role expectations between themselves and their spouse or partner.
The literature review confirmed that gender expectations are usually derived from stereotypes created by people, culture and the national context (Adedeji et al., 2023; Banchefsky & Park, 2018; Wessels, 2020). Allen et al. (2020) discuss how harmonic collectivist cultures encourage women to take on far more significant roles in their homes. This is reflected in the cultural dynamics in Indian and African communities in South Africa and is consistent with the study by Suraj-Narayan (2005) who found that white female managers in South Africa adopted a more egalitarian approach in their households compared to Indian and African female managers. Furthermore, women facing significant gendered expectations in their role in the family domain usually try to manage by themselves – despite being overloaded – before seeking social support (Ten Brummelhuis & Greenhaus, 2018).
Even though some participants did not experience gendered expectations at home or from their family, they still encountered them at a societal level. Banchefsky and Park (2018) explain that the societal judgement that a woman feels in relation to her role can be the result of gender stereotypes prevalent in society, which prescribe how women should behave.
This study showed that gendered expectations are different and that some women were able to change the gendered expectant outlook in their homes. However, more data are needed to analyse the interrelationship between race, personality and culture. All the participants experienced WIF, manifesting in Shockley et al.’s (2017) constructs of time, salience and boundary permeability. However, two additional theoretical constructs, namely patriarchal culture and emotional nonrecovery (an inability to switch off or find emotional relief), emerged as significant contributors to the WFC experienced by the women. Moreover, the analysis of gendered work expectations gave rise to three primary constructs – implicit bias, explicit bias and no different expectations – which explained how the women’s gender influenced their role in the manufacturing environment.
Implicit bias related to women’s need to perform to some unspecified higher metric than that applied to men as well as their subtle exclusion from the ‘boys’ club’. Research highlights that women are broadly assumed to be less capable than men in the same role (Quadlin, 2018). Moreover, in this study, the higher performance expectations that women faced were compounded by their reluctance to acknowledge their role in the care economy at work. Feelings of exclusion from social interactions and a need to constantly prove their worth were consistent with the findings of Banchefsky and Park (2018) in relation to male-dominated work environments.
Explicit bias was evident in participants being given feedback on how they should change their leadership style, such as to be ‘tougher’ or ‘not so tough’. According to Pedulla and Thébaud (2015) and Taylor (2016), men tend to perpetuate gender bias by claiming that those in leadership roles in male-dominated environments should demonstrate masculine traits. Tabassum and Nayak (2021) corroborate the view that male-dominated organisations prescribe the role and acceptable behaviours of women.
The gendered expectations of patriarchal work environments are a significant indicator of how work interferes with family. The data produced in this study revealed a high level of similarity in the participants’ experiences of WIF, notwithstanding their different family roles and varying experiences of gendered expectations in the workplace. All 14 participants experienced WIF conflict in terms of time, salience and boundary permeability (Shockley et al., 2017). For most of the participants, time was a resource constraint in their manufacturing manager role. This was consistent with Eddleston et al.’s (2019) argument that, because of organisational pressures, managers remain connected after (working) hours, adding to their feelings of conflict. According to the work salience theory, women primarily value their family role and are less tolerant of intrusions from work into their family domain (Gutek et al., 1981, 1991; Lavner & Clark 2017; Shockley et al., 2017). In this study, the women concurred that they tended to resent work interfering with family.
The study also provided some new insights. The gendered expectations at work, given the patriarchal nature of manufacturing, induced WIF because women consciously worked harder (longer hours and family sacrifices) to prove themselves in a tough environment – a finding that has not previously been directly associated with WIF conflict (Banchefsky & Park, 2018; Quadlin, 2018). The participants experienced further WIF conflict because of emotional nonrecovery, which caused additional boundary permeability and spillover from work into their family role.
The findings on FIW were mixed, with some women not experiencing this form of conflict. Those who did experience FIW attributed it to gendered expectations at home, which created constraints and prevented them from accessing additional resources. However, none of the women cited any spillover of the family role into their work domain (Shockley et al., 2017). The women said that their work role was more resource-intensive than their family role and they were less tolerant of the demands that the former placed on them. Structural issues around the heavy work demands in the manufacturing industry need to be better understood to mitigate cross-domain conflict and allow for emotional resilience and recovery among women.
The participants’ experiences of stress varied significantly, confirming the intersectional personality links discussed in the literature (Bakker & De Vries, 2021; Geldenhuys & Henn, 2017). However, the most stressful experiences could be traced to the working environment atmosphere rather than resource constraints. Gender bias, manifesting as claims of female managers ‘not measuring up’ and having questionable commitment to their work role, was regarded as a leading stress trigger. This finding goes beyond the argument that women in male-dominated environments feel unwelcome but suggests that women can experience the alienating environment as hostile (Kossek et al., 2021).
Other identified causes of stress were the high-paced nature of manufacturing and the participants’ inability to switch off. Based on the findings, an argument can be made that the female managers lacked effective support structures to enable them to manage the demands of their jobs, which gave rise to stress (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017).
All participants chose psychological detachment or emotional coping mechanisms to deal with stress (Bakker & De Vries, 2021; Holman et al., 2018) rather than problem-focused coping mechanisms to sustainably tackle the sources of stress (French et al., 2018; Holman et al., 2018; Ten Brummelhuis & Greenhaus, 2018). This study revealed that some of the women received support from family and friends while others received no support at all. Interestingly, even when women in more egalitarian, nongendered roles received support in their homes, they did not automatically rely on it as a mechanism to alleviate stress.
Finally, all participants felt that organisational support was generally lacking and that even where organisational wellness programmes were in place, they were inadequate. Half the participants acknowledged that they had devised their own personal mentorship and coaching programmes as a coping mechanism, sourcing expertise through their informal work networks. This was consistent with the assertion by Holman et al. (2018) that organisations do not appear to have grasped what their role is when it comes to providing coping-related support and instead are heavily reliant on their employees to direct stress-coping initiatives (French et al., 2018; Ten Brummelhuis & Greenhaus, 2018). Organisations’ abdication in this regard (Holman et al., 2018) does not bode well for employee well-being, retention and performance or – particularly in a manufacturing context – for gender inclusivity.
Conclusion and significance of the study
This study set out to explore the gendered expectations of female managers in the manufacturing industry in South Africa, including how such expectations contribute to stress in both the work and family contexts, and how female managers attempt to manage or mitigate this stress.
The study produced mixed findings, but a key conclusion is that female managers’ stress is strongly linked to the patriarchal and often uncompromising environment in which they work, coupled with – in most cases – a lack of understanding of and support for their family-related obligations and activities. As a result, the managers experience varying degrees of WFC, with WIF generally being more pronounced than FIW. Many female managers therefore have a double burden in terms of the time they need to devote to emotional and physical work (whether paid or unpaid). Having to navigate a patriarchal working environment with its associated exclusionary practices and gender stereotypes of women has a compounding effect on female managers’ stress levels within and between the work and family domains.
A notable implication of the study is that, despite efforts to encourage greater diversity, the manufacturing industry in South Africa will continue to lose women to more welcoming and less-pressurised professions and working environments. This does not bode well for growing the talent pool in an industry that is vital for boosting job creation and economic growth.
Manufacturing organisations would do well to reflect seriously on how they can introduce more women-friendly or gender-neutral working environments with the necessary physical and emotional support structures and what long-term steps they can take to bring about substantive gender transformation in the industry. Through the insights that it has produced, the study not only makes a practical contribution to businesses in South Africa but also offers an important platform for further research, particularly given its sector and gender focus.
For example, future studies could include a more in-depth analysis of the intersectional dynamics between patriarchal work cultures and workplace stress among marginalised employees; an investigation into stress, burnout and other health problems in the manufacturing industry; a study of how to achieve the optimal workplace design and support structures to promote inclusion and social cohesion and an in-depth investigation into the social support mechanisms that are, and could be, used to defuse WFC among employees with a heavy care responsibility.
Admittedly, the study had certain limitations. For example, the researcher’s role as a female manager in a manufacturing firm heightened the risk of bias although protocols were followed to ensure the consistency and integrity of the data. In addition, gendered expectations, WFC and stress are sensitive topics and certain participants may have been reluctant to share their authentic experiences.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) of the University of Pretoria and the Toyota Wessels Institute for Manufacturing Studies (TWIMS) for their institutional support of this article.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
Authors’ contributions
A.N. (Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria) designed the research approach and interpreted the findings for her MBA research. L.K. (Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria) supervised the MBA study.
Funding information
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Data availability
Tables of themes from the raw data are presented in the article. Supporting documentation of coding and categorisation of raw data is available on request as it is included in the original research report.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are the product of professional research. It does not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency or that of the publisher. The authors are responsible for this article’s results, findings and content.
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