Between career and care: exploring the encouraging and discouraging factors affecting women’s work–life balance in Pakistan’s banking industry

Purpose Women have always been a segment of organizational success, but occasionally, they become entangled in the circle of life that affects their work–life balance. Therefore, this paper aims to explore positive and negative factors affecting women’s work–life balance. Design/methodology/approach This research used a sequential exploratory design, through which qualitative data on emerging themes were first extracted by conducting 25 in-depth interviews. Later, quantitative data was collected from the women banking officials through 403 survey questionnaires. Findings The study explores encouraging factors, including social support and organizational support and discouraging factors, including stress and anxiety, work-family conflict and role overload, which in turn affect work–life balance, such as family, job and life satisfaction. The study supported the positive and significant influence of encouraging factors on work–life balance in terms of family, job and life satisfaction. On the other hand, discouraging factors negatively influenced work–life balance. So, work–life balance is a controversial challenge for women bankers. Practical implications In anticipation of strategies and rules that should be changed to help women face workplace complications. The policies should be properly designed in favor of working women, prioritizing their lives. Originality/value This study advances the work–life balance literature by integrating both encouraging (organizational and social support) and discouraging (role overload, stress and work–family conflict) factors into a single integrated framework and testing their simultaneous effects on family, job and life satisfaction among women in Pakistan’s banking sector.