Work-Family Conflict & Family-Work Conflict: A Gender Perspective with Impact on Life Satisfaction

Nowadays most employed adults are found to be struggling with the work and family conflict which adversely impact their life-satisfaction, thus, the current study aims to bring forth the gender differences in work-family conflict (WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC) and their impact on the life satisfaction of the employed adults. Measures of the constructs were obtained by a questionnaire which consists of Work-Family Conflict & Family-Work Conflict Scale (Netemeyer et. al., 1996) and The Satisfaction with Life scale (SWLS) (Diener et. al., 1985)), from a sample of 80 employed adults aged 30-50 yrs, who are full-time employed and working in Lucknow, India. Work-family conflict (WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC) were treated as predictor variables whilst life satisfaction of the employed adults constituted the criterion variable. Two-way ANOVA were employed. Results show that working women experiences high overall work and family conflict as compared to working men( df= 78; t= 13.95; p> 0.05); significant inverse relationships are observed in the mean life-satisfaction scores of High WFC and Low WFC in working women (df= 38; t=5.94; p>0.05) and working men (df= 38; t=10.04; p>0.05) as well as for High FWC and Low FWC in working women (df= 38; t=4.27; p>0.05) and working men (df= 38; t=2.95; p>0.05). Gender differences were clearly evident in WFC where working women are experiencing higher WFC as compared to working men but nominal gender differences are seen in FWC. It was concluded that Work-family conflict (WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC) exert a significant negative impact on the of life satisfaction of the employed adults.