PSYCHOLOGY MASTER'S THESIS ABSTRACT

Lori Okimoto

Industrial/Organizational
August 1990

Ideal Gender Role Attitude and Reported Gender Role Behavior and their Effect
on Work-Family Role Conflict among Dual-Career and Dual-Earner Wives

   
    Although work-family issues involving dual-career couples has been researched, the literature has not defined differences in types of dual-career couples.  The purpose of this thesis was to examine how gender role congruency between ideal attitude and reported behavior affected wives’ perceptions of their work-family conflict.  Combinations of wives’ attitudes and behaviors (traditional or egalitarian) were examined.  Work commitment and spousal support were also studied.  The results indicated that there were no differences in conflict reported by dual-career and dual-earner wives.  Dual-career wives did not differ from dual-earner wives in their ideal gender role attitude.  In addition, there was no difference in the work commitment reported by dual-career and dual-earner wives.  There was little correlation between spousal support and work-family conflict.  These findings were discussed in relation to the nature of the hypotheses, measures, the subject pool and future research.

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