Gender Ideology and Work-Family Conflict in Global Perspective

Lakshita Bhagat, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi, India
Srinivas Goli, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Shubhra Kriti, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai

Reconciliation of work and family has increasingly become an important concern for people worldwide. Despite a sharp increase in the research on work and family interface, the growing scholarship does not offer conclusive evidence on the association between work-family conflict (WFC) and gender ideology. Since gender ideology impinges on a variety of work and family behaviours, from the choice of occupation to the division of labour, this study is set to answer the question of whether individuals with traditional gender ideology experience more WFC than people with egalitarian gender ideology. The study uses data from the ISSP 2012 module ‘Family and Changing Gender Roles’. We find a positive association between WFC score and gender ideology score globally, pointing out that traditional individuals are more likely to report WFC than non-traditional individuals. Therefore, subjective notion like gender ideology also matters in experiencing WFC apart from physical constraints.

Keywords: Families, Unions and Households, Gender Dynamics, Human Capital, Education, and Work

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