Journal of Woman and Family Studies

Investigating the evolution of gender’s role in work-life discourse: Bibliometric and visualization analysis

Document Type : Research/Original/Regular

Authors

1 Assistant professor, Department of management, Institute for humanities and cultural studies, Tehran, Iran.

2 Associate Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

For almost three decades, the issue of work-life interface of employees has been considered by researchers in this field. With the wider presence of women in professional activities, the issue of gender and its role in work-life interface is becoming more important and the number of research in this field is increasing. The purpose of this article is to provide a systematic review of research conducted in this field and to examine their evolution. Accordingly, studies in the field of work-life interface with emphasis on the role of gender, from the beginning until now (1991 to 2021) were extracted from the Web of Science database and analyzed using VOS Viewer software. The results were presented in two main sections. First; Descriptive information that included the quantitative trend of research and citations in this field, top articles, most active researchers, countries, journals and universities, and second; visualization analyses also include co citation and keywords co-occurrence which show the intellectual and conceptual structure of this field. The results showed that in addition to the increasing quantitative growth of research on this concept, the evolution of research topics in this discourse was from the negative side of work-life interface of women in the form of work-life conflict to the positive side of this concept in the form of enrichment and work-life balance and finally, the ideological concepts of gender role, gender attitude, gender equality, and gender inequality.

Highlights

Background & Purpose

It has been about three decades that work-life discourse attracted the attention of scholars and researchers(Kavei et al. 2021)With more presence of women in the workplace and involvement with occupational activities, the role of gender in work-life interface discourse is gaining more significance and the number of studies in this field is growing exponentially. Therefore, this study seeks to conduct a systematic review on the research undertakings in this field and also investigate its evolution. To this end, the study processes, main views, research gaps and research focuses are followed. By analyzing the relationships of data obtained from research conducted in the related literature, research flows, intellectual, conceptual and social structures of the subject can also be identified.

Method

This study applied bibliometric and visualization analysis. Bibliometric methods use a quantitative approach to explain, evaluate and analyze published research (Zupic and Cater 2015,Arora and Chakraborty 2021). Accordingly, the specified keywords obtained from the literature were searched in the WOS database as title, abstract, keywords, and then bibliometric data were retrieved. Some inclusion and exclusion criteria were set to reach the accurate data. Firstly, the output was limited to research papers and secondly non English papers excluded from the analysis. Ultimately all bibliometric data output were saved and entered into the VOS viewer software to get visualized (Van Eck, 2016).

 

 

[1]Received: 18 November 2021                                                                Accepted: 25 April  2021

Two analyses used in this study: Co citation and Keywords Co occurrence. The former shows the intellectual structure and the latter shows the conceptual structure of these researches (subramony et al 2021, Zupic & Cater 2015).

Results


The findings show that in spite of some fluctuations during years, the number of studies in this topic reached the highest point in 2020, with 346 papers also the citations with 9670. The paper written by Frone et al. (1992) is the highly cited paper with 1377 citations. Among the most productive countries, United States is the first with 892 papers. Also, among the most productive institutions and universities, University of London is ranked first with 55 scientific publications. Moreover, Community Work Family is the leading journal with 64 in terms of publishing related papers in this field. Ultimately, Craig. L, is the most productive author with 13 published papers. Then Co-citation analysis revealed four clusters constructing the underlying thoughts of the current structure of this topic (Fig. 1).

Fig 1. Co-citation analysis

As a result, the blue cluster (the first one), includes studies considering gender as a differentiating variable regarding the of work- life interface. Also indicating conflict between work and life which is focused by Greenhaus & Beutell(1985). The second cluster (the green one), encompasses studies which conceptualize the balance in work-life  interface and mostly have a positive look which is focused by (Carlson et al.2006) on this relationship also considering the gender as an influential factor in each area. The dominant theme over the studies in the third cluster (the red one), is the studying of the conflict, empowerment and balance between women’s work-life in various context, industries and jobs. The forth cluster (the yellow one) is the smallest proportion of studies and relatively newer than other clusters discussing concepts such as gender ideology and also attitudes and beliefs about gender roles. Keywords Co-occurrence analysis also conducted to enable discovering the research streams and conceptual structure of this field. Respectively, the most common and repetitive keywords among authors were identified as: gender, work-life balance, work-family conflict, work- family balance, job satisfaction, gender equity, work and family, burnout, gender inequity and wellbeing

Conclusion

The quantitative trend of the gender role in work-life interface research indicates the continuous growth of these studies implying increasing attention of scholars. The trend illustrates the evolution in concepts from the negative side of conflict to positive side of enrichment, balance and integration and ultimately ideological concepts such as gender equity.

 

Ethical consideration

 

Compliance with ethical guidelines 

This study has been carried out in accordance with the ethical codes of human research. All quotations and citations are presented with references.

Funding: The study was conducted without the financial support of any organization or person.

Authors' contribution: The first author provided the study literature and extended and elaborated the analysis. The second author carried out collecting data and analysis via software.

Conflict of interest: This reserch is not in conflict with personal or organizational interests.

Acknowledgments: we appreciate all scholars and researchers contributing to the work-life interface whose reserch were used in this study.

Keywords

Main Subjects

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Journal of Woman and Family Studies
Volume 10, Issue 3 - Serial Number 26
November 2022
Pages 103-126