Study On Work-family Conflict Among Professional Women

Several researches show that women experience more severe work-family conflict than men. Chinese particular culture background and the fact of more and more women joined in work place aggravate the conflict. Besides, work-family conflict among professional women is a new question for discussion in career management and work-family relation theory. Therefore, it is meaningful in theory and in practice to have a systemic study on work-family conflict among Chinese professional women, using researches in existence. This article uses literature analysis and experience analysis methods to discusses the influential factors, expressive forms and consequence of work-family conflict among professional women, then makes suggestions on balancing work-family conflict among professional women.The innovations of this article consist of two aspects as follow. First, it uses several opinions for reference and discusses work-family conflict among professional women from different points of view, such as, sociology, management, and psychology. Second, it has a systemic study on work-family conflict among Chinese professional women, from influential factors, expressive forms, consequence and countermeasures. Elaborately, the influential factors of work-family conflict among professional women include macroscopical factors, midscopical factors and microcosmic factors. Macroscopical factors involve population characteristics, social culture, economy, politics and laws, and technology. Midscopical factors involve work characteristics and organization characteristics. Microcosmic factors involve family responsibility, support from spouse, role value and competence of professional women. Its internal expressive forms include the conflict between roles demand and individual competence, and the conflict between individual roles desirability and social roles expectation; its exterior expressive forms include time conflict, strain conflict and behavior criterion conflict. Work-family conflict among professional women has negative influence on stabilization and prosperity of society, on performance and competitive predominance of organization, on harmoniousness and happiness of family, and on physical and mental health of professional women. On the basis of foregoing study, this article brings out countermeasures from macroscopical, midscopical and microcosmic aspects, giving some suggestions to balance work-family conflict among professional women.