CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1.      Background to the Study

Women in many cultures areseen as basically responsible for taking care of their children and husband.They give birth to children, rear them and provide the necessary comfort forthe man.    It is believed in mostcultural settings especially in Nigeria that the man as head and bread winnershould go out to fend for his family while to woman is to treat him as a kingwhen he comes back.  Some culturesespecially in developing countries still believe that it does not worthtraining the girl-child in western education. This is because of the archaicnotion that a ‘woman’s education ends in the kitchen’. The girl-child of todaybecomes the mother tomorrow, so the training and preparation given to thegirl-child today determines who the mother of tomorrow will be.  The holy book, the Bible in Genesis 3: 16says that the desire of a woman shall be of her husband and he shall rule overher. Therefore, many people see a woman as somebody that should not beambitious and does not have a life of her own. Women were seen as second classcitizens and as such were not given their rightful position in the society.  In some organizations, they were not employedinto some key positions because they were seen as being weak.

Women were predominatelyhouse wives until the World War II, when they were needed to fill the gap inthe industries (Acemoglu, Autor and Davis 2004). Even after the war, when mencame back to the industries, women continued to be engaged in organizations.Again the western education of the girl-child has brought women to thelimelight.  It became obvious that womencould favourably compete with their male counterparts. However, the facelift inthe representation of women in the different walks of life comes at a highprice and sacrifice paid by mothers.  Theresponsibility of taking care of the home, husband and children is seen as thesole responsibility of the woman in many cultural settings today. This givesthe woman more responsibilities than necessary. The economic and social changesin the contemporary environment have brought additional responsibilities and anew dimension to the roles played by women.

This change in thepredominant role of women in the society also has great impact on theirhusbands.  In Africa, before theeducation and entrance of women into different careers, some house chores werethe exclusive preserve of women. Unfortunately, times are changing, in mosthomes; some men now take up those responsibilities in order to keep the homemoving. Although, this is not still accepted in some cultures but it cannot becompared with the situation before the twenty first century.

Employee – friendly organizations have done so much toencourage the working mothers in their organizations to succeed in theirvarious jobs and at the same time enjoy a good family relationship. This is inrecognition of the important roles the mothers play both in the society and theirvarious families. The nature of the organization determines the kind of supportand the satisfaction that will be enjoyed by the employees.  According to research findings by Mauno,Kinnunen and Feldt (2012), in the paper mill, mothers benefited more from highwork-family support than fathers, while in Information Communication Technology(ICT) Company, fathers benefited more than mothers.  Thus high work-family support was associatedwith higher job satisfaction among mothers in the paper mill and among fathersin the ICT Company.  Some of theseorganizations see these supports as ways of encouraging their employees whileothers see them as ways of ensuring a better life for the next generation.  This is because, when a woman fails in herresponsibility of raising good children, the society suffers it since thechildren will become nuisance to their environment.

This study intends toconsider the conflict working mothers experience in Lagos State because of theuniqueness of the society.  Lagos Stateis the former capital of Nigeria and also presently the commercial capital ofNigeria.  It is known to be denselypopulated with heavy traffic. Lagos had a population of about 25 million as at2015. Lagos has experienced tremendous growth from a population of about 1.4million in 1970 to 25 million in 2015. The State generates about 25% of theGross Domestic Product (GDP) of Nigeria. It is the most economically viable state in Nigeria (World PopulationReview, 2015).  The large and diverse population in Lagos State is as aresult of heavy migration from other parts of Nigeria. Lagos is the home forwomen from different cultural backgrounds in Nigeria.  Again there are working mothers in theprivate and public sectors in Lagos State. Some “Lagosians” leave their homes as early as 5 am and do not get backto the home even as late as 10 pm.  It isinteresting to state that some of these people are working mothers.