The Moderating Role of Sex on Gender Role Orientation’s Meditation of Work-Family/Family-Work Conflict and Satisfaction Outcomes

While biological sex has been examined in the work-family interface, findings have been inconsistent in determining if males and females differ in their experiences of work-family conflict (WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC), and how conflict impacts their job, family, and life satisfaction. These inconsistent findings may be due to the changing roles of men and women, as not all men and women are adhering to traditional gender roles. Furthermore, many researchers have used incorrect terminology, indicating that they examined gender, when they actually assessed sex. Thus, the current study’s purpose was to address the shortcomings of the previous literature by examining how male and females’ gender role orientation (one’s degree of conformity to his or her traditional gender roles) mediated the relationship between WFC/FWC and job, family, and life satisfaction. Approximately 400 working adults were sampled using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Preliminary analyses found that having children related to more FWC, having younger children related to more FWC and more family satisfaction, having only one child living in the home related to less job satisfaction, viewing one’s job as a career related to more job and life satisfaction, higher levels of education related to more FWC, and higher levels of the participant’s spouse’s education related to more FWC and WFC. Following preliminary analyses, a structural equation modeling approach was employed, finding significant direct effects for WFC and job satisfaction and WFC and life satisfaction. It was found that gender role orientation did not mediate any paths between WFC and FWC and satisfaction outcomes. Thus, examining sex as a moderator of gender role orientation’s mediation could not be conducted. However, due to finding significant direct effects, analyses were run to determine if sex moderated any direct paths between conflict and satisfaction outcomes, finding that sex was not a significant moderator. Lastly, it was found that females adhered to more egalitarian gender roles than males. Results obtained from this study add support for interventions in the workplace to increase job satisfaction and life satisfaction as well as interventions in the home domain to increase family satisfaction.