Purpose This paper aims to examine the work-life balance (WLB) experiences of tribal working women belonging to the matrilineal Khasi and Jaintia communities of Meghalaya, India, using an identity-based approach. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews conducted with 18 tribal women working in the formal sector helped generate descriptions of the subjective subliminal tensions they experienced in their efforts to balance work and home life. Findings Six key themes emerged: webs of role-based responsibilities; reframing family around work; revising self-identity through work; challenges and coping tactics; traditional community influences on management of work and home life; and enacting womanhood as problem-solving. Research limitations/implications This study contributes to the literature on women and WLB in that it expands the theoretical understanding of the impact of identity work on women’s WLB. Practical implications A healthy WLB is crucial for enhanced intrinsic motivation and consequently women’s psychological empowerment and career satisfaction. This has important social and practical implications for enriching tribal women’s quality of life in India and facilitating their contribution towards the betterment of their communities and the economy at large. To this end, policymakers should launch awareness campaigns pertaining to tribal women’s WLB, to aid organizations in rolling-out contextually relevant work-life management programmes for these women. Originality/value This study extends an identity-based approach as a general theory of the self to examine matrilineal tribal women's WLB construction as a distinct form of “doing” and “being”.

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The work-from-home practices initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic have caused a paradigmatic shift in how we work. Work from home (WFH) led to an intermingling of the domestic and professional spaces, and the WFH phenomenon has asymmetrically impacted women’s work. In such a scenario, women professionals experience a greater work–life conflict, and the significance of family support comes to the fore. Studying this phenomenon in the Indian context is interesting because the primary responsibility for Indian women lies in the domestic arena. Female Indian professionals are expected to seamlessly fulfil their domestic duties no matter how demanding their job is. The multiplicity of challenges that affect women professionals’ productivity at work only gets compounded when women are expected to work from the domestic sphere where the demand of domestic duties constantly confronts them. Several global scholars have indicated that the burden of domestic duties was greater for women during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the burden of child-care, elderly care and cooking activities increased as outsourcing such activities was not an easily available option during the lockdowns which led to reduced work productivity amongst women. However, this study revealed that Indian female professionals reported better work productivity than female professionals working from their workspace. Indian women are used to fulfilling domestic and professional duties even prior to the pandemic, and Indians perceive greater satisfaction in interpersonal relational experiences rather than individualistic career goals. The study also revealed that family support did not increase when women were working from home, but the increase in family support increased women’s work productivity. Findings also indicate that female professionals with children showed significantly lower work productivity than female professionals (married and unmarried) without children.

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