Man and woman have different balancing styles
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In An Examination of the Implications and Costs of Work-Life Conflict in Canada (1999), Linda Duxbury and colleagues recognize the adverse effects of work-life stress on the overall productivity and wellness of employees. They observed that “…the variability in employee responses to work and family environments…” are affected by “fundamental individual differences”, specifically:
Gender
There are physiological and sociological bases for
gender differences when responding to work-life issues. Women are more stressed than
men due to their biological programming: “…wherein women tend to exhibit
emotional symptoms…men tend to manifest physiological diseases…”
In Work-role Expectations and Work-Family Conflict: Gender
Differences in Emotional Exhaustion (2004), Margaret Posig and
Jill Kickul observe that among men work-family conflict (or the extent to which
work demands lead to household tension) contributes to the indirect link
between emotional exhaustion and work-role expectations. The same can be said
for women; but job problems caused by family commitments often results in
work-family conflict and emotional exhaustion.
Enilda Delgado and Maria Canabal’s Factors Associated with Negative Spillover from Job to Home
Among Latinos in the United States (2006) also note how gender
influences negative spillover (NS) of work demands to home life: “Working
conditions, including hours worked, supervisor support, job pressure, and job
autonomy significantly impact NS for both groups.”
According to Duxbury et al. (1999), the socialization
process also affects gender-based responses towards work-life stress, with
women’s role expectations containing “a higher level of stressors.” Within the
domain of personal life (PL), this could mean expecting them to do chores and
caregiving even after performing paid work (PW); while in the workplace, it is
occupying jobs where autonomy is minimal. Thus, women’s varied response from
men can also be attributed to differences in PW-PL stressors caused by gender
stereotypes.
Personality and Coping Strategies
When faced with a taxing situation, everybody uses
“adaptational techniques…to master a major psychological threat and its
attendant negative feelings,” explains Ellen Galinsky of the Family and Work
Institute. The coping style reflects an individual’s personality and
“interpretation of potentially competing environmental demands.”
Herta Toth’s Gendered Dilemmas of the Work-Life Balance in Hungary
(2005) offers a related finding. Through 30 interviews with male and female
managers of a Budapest-based company, it was found out “that men and
women have different perceptions of work-life balance and adopt different
coping strategies to manage work and family commitments.”
Thus, apart from describing work-life conflict as
highly perceptual, Duxbury and colleagues view coping behavior as the outcome
of an employee’s decision to do (or not to do) something about the problem.
Such manner of coping is shaped by her/his psychological make-up and cognitive
assessment of the situation. However, they note that analyzing coping styles
remains unexplored in this context.
