Switching selves?: The effects of gender role behaviour on women’s work and relationships

ABSTRACT

Women early in their career life cycle navigate gender roles and make decisions about their professional and personal lives. These decisions and experiences establish an important foundation for women’s occupational trajectories and may inform career development efforts. Thus, we examined communal and agentic behaviours at work and at home among employed, heterosexual, emerging adult women (N = 182) in the US. Quantitative cluster analyses indicated unique configurations of agentic and communal behaviour among women with implications for women’s job and romantic relationship satisfaction. Results further psychological insight into gender-role-related outcomes in work and life settings and provide material to broadly inform future research and organizational-level and societal-level interventions focused on helping women thrive at work and home.

KEYWORDS:

• Emerging adulthood
• gender roles
• women
• work

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Rachael D. Robnett for her feedback on previous versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an internal Faculty Grant awarded to the second author.

Notes on contributors

Sarah E. Thoman

Dr. Sarah E. Thoman explores the influence of gender on career-related experiences, especially among individuals in gender atypical professions. Recent projects employ approaches informed by positive psychology, community psychology, and feminist theory, to investigate and further social justice in career contexts.

Alexandra I. Zelin

Dr. Alexandra I. Zelin received her PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from the University of Akron. Her research and applied work are focused around gender, sexism, and sexual harassment and assault both in and out of the workplace. She is also dedicated to taking an intersectional lens in her research, teaching, and practice.

This work was supported by an internal Faculty Grant awarded to the second author.

There are no conflicts of interest in submitting this manuscript.

We would like to thank Rachael D. Robnett for her feedback on previous versions of this manuscript and Lauren Snowdy for her help with data collection.