engleski

Work‐family Conflict and the Gender Role Attitudes and Striving for Achievement of Spouses in Croatia

Results of previous research suggesting work and family stressors as antecedents of work‐family conflict are clear, but there are less clear results and a lack of research on the role of personal traits in the experience of work‐family conflict, especially when taking into account the gender of the participants and the characteristics of their spouse. The aim of this study was to examine whether and how certain personal traits, i.e. attitudes about gender roles in marriage and striving for achievement, contribute to the explanation of conflicts between work and family roles, and what is their role within a model of work‐family conflict antecedents on a sample of employed spouses in Croatia. In this context, the relationships between the mentioned personal traits, job characteristics (assessments of psychological requirements of the job and the negative effects of work‐time) and family characteristics (traditionalism of marital roles and the quality of family functioning), social support at work and in the family from various sources (supervisor, colleagues, spouses, and other family members and close people), and conflict between work and family roles (work‐to‐family conflict and family‐to‐work conflict) especially for men and women and among spouses were examined. This a priori at least encourages the development of a model in which work‐family conflict is explained by taking into account the dyadic interaction between spouses. The study was conducted on a total of 358 employed marital partners in Croatia who have at least one child in the household, using the research method of selfassessments. The participants were mostly from the Zadar County. There was a higher level of striving for achievement and traditional attitude about gender roles in marriage in men than in women. In general, the results show a higher workload in men and higher load in the family domain in women, which is in line with the traditional pattern of the division of gender roles. It can be concluded that traditionalism on gender roles in marriage and striving for achievement of spouses are a significant factor in the context of work‐family conflict, with greater support for a complete mediation of social support at work and in the family, the psychological demands of work, and the quality of family functioning in the relationship of these individual characteristics and the (dis)agreement of the individual and spouse in these characteristics with perceptions of work‐to‐family and family‐to‐work conflict. The results also show that relatively more egalitarian women (such as the women in this sample) are more susceptible to the effects of their partners, especially when it comes to his attitude about gender roles in marriage.

work-family conflict ; striving for achievement ; gender role attitudes ; gender ; employed spouses

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