Gender differences in the relationships between work-to-family conflict and satisfaction among dual-earner spouses

ABSTRACT

The study explores how gender affects the relationships linking work-to-family conflict to job and life satisfaction among dual-earner spouses. Data were collected from 157 paired Chinese managers and their spouses. Our findings supported a pattern of gender asymmetry in both the within-person effect and the crossover effect. For the within-person effect, we found the relationship between work-to-family conflict and job satisfaction was negative for wives, but null for husbands, the relationship between work-to-family conflict and life satisfaction was negative for husbands, but null for wives. As for the crossover effect, husbands’ work-to-family conflict was negatively related to wives’ life satisfaction, but wives’ work-to-family conflict had a null relationship with husbands’ life satisfaction. Theoretical implication and future research directions are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Work-to-family conflict
• gender
• resource depletion
• source attribution
• crossover effect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China: [Grant Number 71573147, 71672099].

Notes on contributors

Jifang Dou

Jifang Dou ([email protected]) is a postdoctoral researcher in the PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University, China and the Teaching Center for Writing and Communication, Tsinghua University, China. Her research interests include work–family balance, leadership, and crowdfunding. Jifang will be serving as the corresponding author for this manuscript.

Baiyin Yang

Baiyin Yang ([email protected]) is a professor in the Department of Leadership and Organization Management, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, China. His research interests include leadership, creativity and innovation, organizational learning, and theory-building methodology.

Tan Wang

Tan Wang ([email protected]) is an independent scholar at Beijing, China. His research interests include supply chain finance, equity investment, market value management and household financial behavior.