Women Empowerment and Work-Life Balance of Women Engineers in the Malaysian Energy Sector: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Malaysian energy sector is listed as one of the sectors that have lower participation of women. This is due to the problem of attracting and retaining the women workforce within the field. The major reason women leave the energy sector especially in the engineering field, is due to the difficulties in balancing work-life. Women hold dual and triple roles where they are stucked between responsibilities as mother, wife, and daughter as well as responsibilities in the workplace. This situation contributes a great impact on their work-life balance. Empowering women in the sector could help in giving them more control in managing their work and family. Hence, this paper aims to provide an overview on women empowerment and its impact on work-life balance. In addition, this paper proposes a conceptual framework to analyze the level of women empowerment (welfare, access, conscientization, participation and control) and its impact on work-life balance of women engineers in Malaysian energy sector for future study. This paper will contribute to the knowledge on an area that is still relatively uncovered. Which refers to the impact of women empowerment and work-life balance of women engineers in energy sector. It is important for organizations to be aware about the importance of women empowerment and their employees work-life balance. Thus, organizations can take an appropriate intervention in order to empower their women talent and assist them to have better work-life balance.