Attitudes Towards Work and Family Roles and Their ...

Sex Roles, Vol. 45, Nos. 7/8, October 2001 f 0 2002)

Attitudes Towards Work and Family Roles and Their Implications for Career Growth of Women: A Report From India Deepti Bhatnagar^ Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

Ujvala Rajadhyaksha Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

This paper explored attitudes towards work and family roles of professional men and women in India. Ninety-two husband-wife pairs from salaried, upper middle class, dual-career families in India participated in the study. Propositions based on adult development theories of men and women, regarding reward value derived from and commitment made to occupational, parental, marital, and homemaker roles over the life cycle, were tested. Results indicated that there was no change with age, in attitudes towards occupational and homemaker roles. Instead, gender-based differences in attitudes towards these roles were observed. Attitudes towards the marital and parental role varied across the life cycle, although not in keeping with propositions based on the adult development theories of men and women. There was no reversal in attitudes towards work and family roles of men and women after midlife. Rather, some reversal in attitudes appeared to occur between the marital and parental role, over the life span of both men and women. Results are reviewed within the Indian cultural context and their implications for the career development of women are discussed. KEY WORDS: family roles; Indian culture; career development.

'To whom correspondence should be addressed at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India. 549 0360-0025/01/1000-0549/0 (D 2002 Plenum Publishing Corporalion

550

Bhatnagar and Rajadhyaksha

INTRODUCTION If the twentieth century was characterized by a constant search for new geographical markets, the twenty-first century will be characterized by a search for new talent. As the competition for well-qualified, high-performing human resources intensifies, organizations are recasting and redesigning their policies that affect career development of employees, with the intention of attracting and retaining only the "best" to stay with the organization. Today it is recognized more than ever before that happy employees stay committed to the organization and that keeping an employee happy means understanding and appreciating work and nonwork aspects of an employee's life. This fact has been underscored by the globalization of organization structures and the increasing diversity of the workforce caused particularly by the entry of growing numbers of women into paid employment. All these changes have made it imperative to move away from the traditional notion of the "organization man" as a young White male to a more pluralistic definition of the same. In this context, efforts to increase employee retention and productivity need to begin with an improved understanding of the aspirations and attitudes towards work and family roles of professional women, along with those of their men colleagues. Our paper presents results of one such effort among Indian men and women professionals.

UNDERSTANDING ATTITUDES TOWARDS WORK AND EAMILY ROLES USING THE DEVELOPMENT APPROACH Of the several theoretical approaches that can be used to understand an individual's attitudes towards work and family roles, the developmental approach has been gaining considerable popularity for its dynamic and comprehensive perspective. This approach sees work and family life not just as static phenomena but also as an evolving reality, which offers individuals different constellations of challenges and choices at different stages of development. Further, the developmental approach addresses issues relating to work-family interfaces, and it also allows for a different view of the adult development of women by acknowledging that developmentally women are different from men. For a long time adult development theories propounded by Erikson (1978) and Levinson (1978) to name a few claimed to speak for the development of all adults. These theories were based mainly on the life experiences of North American men. For instance, the work of Daniel Levinson and associates (1978) was based on intensive 20-hr interviews with 40 men in the age group 35-45 years hailing from the northeastern part of the United States.

Attitudes Towards Work and Family Roles of Professional Men and Women in India

551

As a result of his study, Levinson identified four broad periods of stability interspersed with periods of change in the life cycle of a man. The four periods of stability were the era of preadulthood (8-22 years), the era of early adulthood (17^5 years), the era of middle adulthood (40-65 years), and the era of late adulthood (60-65 years). Intervening between the periods of stability were four periods of change the early adult transition years (17-22 years), the age-30 transition, the midlife transition (40-45 years), and the late adult transition (60-65 years). During the periods of stability, the life structure of a man involved addressing the appropriate developmental tasks during that period, whereas during the periods of transition, elements of life structure were reviewed and rearranged so as to respond to changes in one's external and internal psychological domains. According to Levinson, building a career and family were the two major preoccupations for men during the early adulthood era. Career usually took precedence over family during this phase. Energies were focused towards attaining occupational goals, and family concerns were relegated to a second place. Accomplishments in the world of work helped enhance selfesteem and professional standing. The precedence of career over family continued up to middle adulthood. It was not until the midhfe transition years (roughly the midforties) that men begin to experience and deal with family issues, and with confiicts between career and family, in a significant way. During this period, as the purpose of life's journey and milestones on the way were reexamined, men started altering their perspective. Their life priorities underwent major reappraisals; the pursuit of self-mastery and competitive individual accomplishment started being replaced with a commitment to help develop others. In other words, Levinson's description of midlife changes suggested that during this stage, there was less inhibition in shedding some of the stereotypically masculine baggage and a greater willingness to acquire a more stereotypically feminine orientation in work and family roles. Although Levinson did not study men in the late adulthood stage that follows the period of midlife transition, late adulthood is generally understood as a stage that involves coping with trauma of being superannuated, physiological changes, issues of health and mortality, and one's place in the changing structure of family roles. Although mainly on the basis of the life experiences of men, management practitioners have used Levinson's study and other theories belonging to the same genre to explain the work attitudes and work involvement of all employees across the life cycle. Organizational career paths have also been designed based on these theories. It was left to Gilligan (1980) and Bardwick (1980) among others to highlight the fact that the adult development of women may be of a different nature from that of men. Gallos (1989) went on to draw implications of this difference for the career development of

552


women, her most important conclusion being that the career paths designed for men may not be entirely suitable for women. Pioneering work on the psychological development of women has been done by Gilligan (1993). Gilligan, whose work is based on the replication of Kohlberg's moral development theories (Kohlberg, 1969), was the first to question Kohlberg's hierarchical ordering of the affiliation/achievement dichotomy. From Gilligan's work emerged the notion of "difference" in the adult development of men and women, both in the timing and the manner in which they go about addressing and resolving the conflict between the developmental tasks of handling separation and attachment, or autonomy and integration across the life cycle (Gilligan, 1993). Psychological development of women has also been the concern of Bardwick (1980). Focusing her attention on adult (working) women, Bardwick identifies four basic life phases for women that contrast with the life stages of a man. These are early adult transition years (17-28 years), the settling-down period (30-40 years), middle adulthood (40-45 years), and the "age 50 and older" phase. During the early adult transition years, most women, unlike men of the same age, are busy getting married and settling down to family life. The primary concern is to provide a stable start to their marriage, and their investment in work at this stage is not as significant as that of their men counterparts. Attitude towards work involves a commitment to doing an important job well rather than a commitment to an ongoing occupational or professional identity (Gallos, 1989, p. 120). For women, the next phase namely the settling-in period entails strong commitment to family roles especially the maternal role. Most women in this phase expend a lot more energy than do men in raising children as they oversee their children grow and move from preschool to junior school. An attitude towards work that de-emphasizes career in relation to family continues for women until the middle adulthood phase (until the forties), and then things start changing. Having put child-rearing responsibilities behind them, women now have more time and energy to invest in to their careers. During this stage, while most men go through a painful midlife crisis, women experience greater assertiveness and professional accomplishment at work (Gallos, 1989). This being their belated (and probably the last) opportunity to make a mark in their profession, most women who are freshly released from the dominant responsibilities of family roles apply themselves to work with renewed interest and energy. They experience professional resurgence at a life stage when, interestingly, men are ready to move towards the stereotypically feminine "enabler" roles at work and in the family. The age 50 and older phase presents comparable experiences and challenges for men and women as both have to learn to deal with the trauma


553

of separation and loneliness caused by the empty nest at home, retirement from work, and a concomitant of aging—the occasional loss of dear ones. However, traces of differences could still be detectable in the seemingly similar experiences between men and women. As wives are usually younger than their husbands who are normally the first ones to retire and are often keen to support career pursuits of their wives, most women find this phase— post-middle-adulthood—to be professionally challenging and rewarding. Building on this notion of a "return to work" by women at a later stage in their life, Sekaran and Hall (1993) have proposed a model that explains role cycling between work and family for dual-career couples. A couple begins with equal commitment to and involvement in both work and family roles, in the early stage of married life together. However, with the arrival of children into the family, one of the partners, usually the woman, reduces her work involvement, whereas the other partner, usually the man, devotes himself to career-building activities. Once children have grown up and family responsibihties have abated, partners reverse roles. To conclude the discussion on adult development, while both men and women grapple with the developmental issues of attachment and separation in their work and family roles at different life stages, they seem to resolve these conflicts in different ways. The development process of women appears to be the mirror image of that of men. Men seem to begin their adult life with an emphasis on individuality and workplace achievement at the expense of other roles and move towards connectedness at a later phase of their life. Women, on the other hand, seem to begin their adult life by valuing connectedness with significant others more than autonomy and individual achievement, and move towards accepting separation and expression of individual excellence as recognition of self at a later stage.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE The "difference" perspective on the adult development of men and women has been fast gaining ground. However, most of the theorizing has been based on samples of men and women in the United States. Empirical investigation of some of its basic tenets in cultures other than the North American one is still inadequate. This study attempts to address this lacuna by examining whether the attitudes to work and family roles of professional men and women in India follow the pattern suggested by adult development theories. Based on main tenets of the adult development theories, it is possible to propose that the extent to which professional men and women will find the work and family roles (of spouse, parent, and homemaker) personally

554


rewarding and satisfying will vary across their life cycle. It is also possible to propose that the amount of time and energy resources that they are willing to commit to the enactment of work and family roles will vary across their life cycle. TTierefore we can state Proposition I. The reward value of and commitment to the work role will vary significantly across different stages in the life cycle of professional men and women. Proposition 2. The reward value of and commitment to family roles (consisting of marital role, parental role, and homemaker role) will vary significantly across different stages in the life cycle of professional men and women. Further, consistent with adult development theories, we can expect that during early adulthood and during the settling-down phase of middle adulthood (roughly the twenties and thirties), men will derive greater reward value from the work role and will also commit more time and energy resources to this role than will women. Thus the following can be stated; Proposition 3a. During the phase of early adulthood and the settling-down years of middle adulthood, the reward value derived from and the commitment to the work role will be greater for men than for women. However, towards the end of the settling-down period and during and after the middle adulthood years (roughly forties onwards) a reversal in the attitudes towards work and family roles by men and women can be expected. As a result, in a later phase of their life, women will derive greater reward value from and plan greater commitment to the work role than will men. Proposition 3b. During the post-middle-adulthood years (40+ years), the reward value derived from and the commitment to the work role will be greater for women than for men. With regard to the family roles, consistent with adult development theories, in the early adulthood years, women will derive greater reward value from the family roles and will also be more predisposed to committing greater time and energy resources to the enactment of their familial responsibilities than will men. Thus, Proposition 4a. During the phase of early adulthood and the settling-down years of middle adulthood (the twenties and thirties), reward value derived from and commitment to the family roles will be greater for women than for men.


555

Also, compared to women, men will be the ones deriving greater reward value from and planning greater commitment to the family roles in their later years. Therefore we can state Proposition 4b. During the post-middle-adulthood years, the reward value derived from and the commitment to the family roles will be greater for men than for women.

METHOD Participants Participants for the study were "dual-career couples" from the city of Bombay. Dual-career couples are a special case of dual-earner or dualworker couples where both spouses have occupations requiring special training, a high degree involvement or commitment, and the occupations entail a regular sequence of related jobs in a hierarchy of prestige through which persons move (Aldous, 1982). The dual-career lifestyle is a relatively recent hfestyle in the Indian context, and very few studies have focused exclusively on it. Most studies that have looked at work and family issues in India have largely paid attention to the working woman/wife and her changing status in society (e.g., Mitra, Pathak, & Mukherjee, 1980), or on dual worker as opposed to dual-career couples (e.g., Ramu, 1989; Singh & Sahgal, 1995). Because there was no readily available list of dual-career couples in India, the snowball sampling technique (Green, Tull, & Abraham, 1995) and survey research method using questionnaires were used to gather data.-^ On the basis of referrals and other information provided by initial participants, dual-career couples belonging to different age groups were contacted. A set of two self-administered questionnaires, one for each spouse, was given to each couple, and both partners were requested to fill these without consulting each other. The final participants for the study consisted of 184 usable responses from 92 husband-wife pairs, who were living together and were full-time salaried employees at the time of data collection. Participants came from a diverse set of professions such as medicine, management, academics, and so forth. There appeared to be a bias in the sample towards the medical and management professions, which together represented about 87% of the participant group. This bias may have arisen because of the snowball study departed from the interview technique of collecting data predominantly used in previous studies on adult development, in the interest of arriving at reliable and valid empirical results, and also because using several techniques to explore any research question is often preferred to relying on just one methodology (Jick, 1979).

556


sampling method used. Seventy-five percent of the participants were postgraduates, 90% were Hindus, and 62% had a personal monthly income that exceeded Rs l(),()()0 per month, which put them in the upper-middle-class income category in India. To capture broadly, the life phases of men and women as given by Levinson (1978) and Bardwick (1980) in as uniform a manner as possible, the following age cutoffs were used:

ro rs

OS

ro

d

m, ro

NO

d 1 II V

.36

rsi

OS

.12

CO

.01

Q

P

.31

u 3

OS

"^

o

ru k.

ra

r j

d

00

II V

d 1 II V

vO

as'

ro

II V

d 1 II V

.51

ean :

1

r