Abstract
Information Technology is one of the fast growing competitive industries in Sri Lanka. Along with the competitiveness, the nature of the profession involves factors such as long non-standardized working hours, critical deadlines etc. As a consequence, IT professionals strive to achieve a balance between the work and other aspects of their life. This skewed work-life balance drastically affects their health and family life. Therefore, work-life balance is becoming an area of growing concern in the information technology industry. Hence, many researches have been done to identify the factors affecting work-life balance among IT professionals in Sri Lanka. Majority of the existing literature reflect the identified factors that affect the work-life balance irrespective of the gender. However, female IT professionals often find it more difficult to maintain a balance between their personal and professional life. This is one of the root causes to have a huge gender gap in the IT industry of Sri Lanka. Hence, the purpose of this research is to identify the factors which impact on the work-life balance among the female IT Professionals in Sri Lanka. Throughout this research different paradigms have been used. A survey has been conducted with fifty female IT professionals who are currently employed in different IT companies to collect data for this research. The descriptive approach is used for the analysis of this data. In addition to that, extensive research on the literature is carried out to identify the factors affecting the work-life balance. The outcome of this study depicts that the majority of the factors which affect the work-life balance of female IT professionals fall under the two categories; “self-awareness and support systems” and “individual commitment”. Thus the organizations and the female IT professionals by having a better understanding of these factors will be able to provide and achieve a better balance between their personal and professional life.