Work-Family Role Conflict And Its Cultural Influences On Professional Women In Chinese And American Contexts

Culture provides people with guidance concerning appropriate thoughts, feelings,and actions. Culture also gives guidance concerning differences in behavior that areexpected of persons who hold different roles. The study of gender differences hasenriched the study of culture and behavior. Despite the robust body of literature onwork-family conflict experienced by modern people, there is still a lack of specificresearch on professional women’s experiences in balancing life roles. In order totheorize work-family role conflict faced by professional women from Chinese andAmerican contexts, to find the similarities and differences of the ways professionalwomen from both cultures dealing with work-family conflicts, to summarize thecultural or social impact on their life and work, the author begins by outliningwork-family role conflicts in different levels and tries to find the answer fromintegrated intercultural communication theories and adapted questionnaires.The online questionnaire got a total of1550hits, while a total of229Chineseparticipants and65American participants completed their survey. However, in orderto control the number of variables and apply criteria to the sample under study, theauthor used the Microsoft excel spreadsheet filer to delete some unqualified ones fromboth American and Chinese sides. The total number of competed surveys to beanalyzed and discussed is70.After collecting and filtering the surveys, the author analyzed70screenedsurveys by Microsoft Excel and SPSS16.0to investigate eight research questions:(1)The impact of occupation on work-family conflict;(2) The impact of workplacesupport on work-family conflict;(3) The impact of number of children onwork-family conflict;(4) The impact of gender role ideology on work-familyconflict;(5) The impact of collectivism on work-family conflict;(6) The impact of work-family interdependence on work-family conflict;(7) The degree of work-familyconflict in each culture group, and (8)The positive spillover of work-family conflict.The study was unique in its examination of both American and Chinesework-family conflicts and utilization of integrated measures, and how the authordeveloped her statistical survey instrument, showing the quality quantitative andtheoretical building work that she has put forward on this classic blend of IC topics:conflict, organizational contexts, and gender communication.The results highlighted the value of social-cultural variables (e.g. occupation,workplace support, number of children, gender role ideology, collectivism andindividualism, and work-family interdependence), especially in our understanding ofwork-family conflicts and spillover among both American and Chinese professionalwomen.Finally, the author articulates directions for future research and practicalapplications within and across levels of analysis. Implications and the limitations offindings were discussed as well.