Gender Roles and Work: Recent Research

INTRODUCTION

Men and women are often expected to take on specific roles within a marriage and a family due to the many stereotypes developed by the society. The following four articles will focus on differences in gender roles, how couples decide on what roles they must take, how specific roles affect well-being and mental health, and how men and women in particular deal with role conflict through gender roles.

ROLE CONFLICT AND PERCEPTIONS OF GENDER ROLES

A study was done including two samples, university professors including all women currently associate or full professors in Israel's three main universities, and secondary school teachers drawn from the same cities. Questionnaires were sent by mail to the professors and handed out to secondary teachers. After two mailed reminders and several phone calls, the final sample includes 40 professors and 72 teachers. Role conflict was measured as the dependent variable revealing three distinct factors; the impact of children on the functioning of workers, generalized perception of home-work role conflict, and the positive aspect of role combination. The independent variables included the perception of home burden (divided into three domains: "burden of home-making", "burden of dependents", and "burden of outside tasks"), the time allotted to domestic roles, work burden, work time, and perceptions of relative importance of gender roles. Those conducting the study hypothesized that women who work in male-typed occupations do not report stronger role conflict than women who work in female-typed occupations. Domestic work seems less burdensome for women who work in male-typed occupations. The findings did in fact support the hypothesis. Results show that professors spend less time on house work and their dependents and they work longer hours outside their homes than teachers. (Because of demographic characteristics the job of professor was considered the male-type job and the secondary teacher was considered the female-type job.) Teachers were found to attribute more importance to women's family roles and less importance to their work roles, thus they spend more time on domestic activities and less time at work than professors.

THE MARITAL CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER THROUGH WORK AND FAMILY DECISIONS: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS

This article focuses on gender constructs of married couples and how it affects decisions concerning work and family. In the study there were 61 married couples who encountered important work and family decisions in the last 6 months. The staff determined which couples were eligible for the study based on specific criteria which would place the participants in a group that could be used for comparison. It was a longitudinal study with the first part of the study done in 1990 and the second part of the study a year and a half later. In the first part of the study husbands and wives were asked to separately complete a mailed questionnaire including quantitative measures such as marital satisfaction, decision satisfaction, work satisfaction, gender ideology, and stress, and qualitative measures where they were asked to briefly describe outcomes to previous decisions. Forty-four of the 61 couples were located and participated in the second part of the study. This study included open-ended telephone interviews concerning their previous work and family decision. The researchers took each couple's information through a systematic process of analysis, focusing on perceived decisions, actual decision, and statements made about gender roles. Results showed that the basis for perceptions of work and family decision depends on their beliefs about gender in marriage. A part of this gendered experience pointed to the expectations each person had for the other person in the relationship. In this study husbands and wives had different views on wives abilities as economic providers. Much variability was found in the way couples constructed the meaning of men's and women's roles at home and at work. Interpersonal processes were also found as a factor in beliefs and attitudes of gender and work patterns within marriages.

GENDER, MULIPLE ROLES, ROLE MEANING, AND MENTAL HEALTH

The study discussed in this article focuses on multiple roles such as parent, spouse, and worker for each gender and how mental health is affected by these roles. In-depth interviews were conducted with 40 employed married parents who had previously participated in a community panel study of mental health. The survey data made it possible to assess sex differences in distress. Belief questions were included in the follow-up interview to determine what each person saw as the meaning of roles as worker, spouse, and parent. Computers were then used to analyze the information and make conclusions. The results of this study show that women receive fewer health advantages of combining multiple roles than men because of the perceived relationship between work and family roles in respect to gender differences. Women seem to be more distressed by the acquisition of multiple roles because of her perspective on the affect of multiple roles. Most women in the study felt that employment was a negative thing because it prevented them from adequately fulfilling their primary role as spouse and caregiver. Men on the other hand felt less distress because they saw their jobs as a foundation of their family roles. Men and women were found to have different aspects on role conflict which led to different levels of distress.

WORK AND WELL-BEING: GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF EMPLOYMENT

A subsample of 599 women and 753 men were used in this study to examine the differential exposure hypothesis which claims that roles are sources of stressors with respect to gender that impact well-being, and the differential vulnerability hypothesis which claims that gender differences in well-being are sources of social roles in men and women. This study focuses specifically on the effects of work on well-being. The variables considered include: statuses and roles, social and psychological resources (self-esteem, job satisfaction, and social integration), and well-being. Two work characteristics are considered. Work complexity is an assessment by the worker of whether or not his job is interesting and provides him with opportunities to do what he is good at. Control is the degree to which the worker feels the job allows decision-making and gives him control. Well-being was measured by analyzing psychological distress and happiness. Role and status variables were included as controls in the analysis. Some subtle gender differences were found in the consequences of employment characteristics and this tends to support the differential vulnerability perspective. But at the same time, when the variables are controlled, there are differences in exposure which may account for gender differences in well-being. Men's jobs are seen to be more complex than women's which increases the happiness of both men and women. Men benefit more from control in jobs and women benefit more from substantive complexity. But the general conclusion is that both control and substantive complexity enhance well-being.

DISCUSSION/CONCLUSIONS

All of these articles deal with perceptions of gender roles and how gender is affected through different aspects of work. Although they have this common tie, each of them focus on four different aspects of gender roles and work. Family roles have been found to contribute more to role conflict than work roles. Women often get caught in higher role conflict than men because many women put more importance on family roles than they do on work roles. This was backed up by the research done that found women in male-typed jobs to report less role conflict than women in female-typed jobs. The gender difference in this case seems to benefit men and leave them with less role conflict than women. Each couple constructs gender within their marriage and this in turn seems to have an impact on decisions made throughout the marriage. A common example of this is the gender constructs made about economic providers in the family. These differences in constructs are reflected on work decisions. Couples construct gender in a variety of ways and this affects not only work decisions, but all aspects of their lives, including their family responsibilities, and their ideologies. Work and family roles have different meaning for men than for women and these differences can be related to mental health, especially distress. Work affects gender when the meaning of work is the issue because women see work as a prevention from taking care of her family properly, whereas men see work as the key importance which will lead him to take care of his family. This difference in meaning is then interpreted as the cause for women's higher levels of distress. Work roles and gender in this case also seems to benefit men, leaving them with lower levels of distress compared to women. Lastly, identity and role satisfaction are seen as very important because the most consequential effects of work conditions on well-being are seen through job satisfaction and self-esteem. Here it is important to see the differences in gender between men's and women's self concept. This reminds us that men and women have different social constructs which lead to much different experiences with work. As seen through these four studies, gender roles have a big impact on work roles and vice versa. Some research seems to point toward more benefits for men in relating to the work scene, but the main point as mentioned before is that gender and work roles are closely related and men and women have very different views on the meaning of work in their lives.

REFERENCES

Moore, Dahlia & Gobi, Abraham. (1995). Role conflict and perceptions of gender roles: The case of Israel. Sex-Role, 32, 251-270.

Publiesi, Karen. (1995). Work and well-being: Gender differences in the psychological consequences of employment. Journal of Health & Social Behavior, 36, 57-71.

Simon, Robin W. (1995). Bender, multiple roles, role meaning, and mental health. Journal of Health & Social Behavior, 36, 182-194.

Zvonkovic, Anisa M. (1996). The marital construction of gender through work and family decisions: A qualitative analysis. Journal of Marriage & the Family, 58, 91-100.

WEB RESOURCES

Men, Women, and Gender Roles in Marriage

Gender: Psychological Perspectives

Ending the Battle Between the Sexes

Culture of Androgyny

Contributed by Sara Spykerman, September 30, 1997.

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