Balance or Unbalance of Professional, Family and Private Life in Contemporary Greece?

Reconciliation of work and private life is an important determinant positively relate d to the female participation rate, increasing employability, reducing unemployment, enhancing gender equality, promoting the sharing of caring responsibilities and addressing current demographic challenges. Reconciliation policies can be defined as policies that directly support the combination of professional, family and private life. In addition to leave facilities, flexible working-time arrangements, financial allowances and child-care services, family members involvement seem to play important role to combine more effectively these two spheres. The paper investigates how the situations for the reconciliation of professional and personal life of working women in Greece are being shaped in the time of the crisis. Is there more or less unbalance and how it is experienced by working women? Indeed the limited state provisions and lack of childcare facilities in combination with increased costs for private care shapes new conditions for the reconciliation of work and private life in our country. In the context of this paper, we will refer to practices of reconciling family and professional obligations, to the factors that influence them, and to the role of the family and the spouse / partner in achieving better harmonization. In addition, we will attempt to record the difficulties and the problems faced by women as a result of the economic crisis. The data comes from a survey with sample of 1,000 working women living in different areas (metropolitan, urban and rural) of Greece.