Job-family Trade-offs

Abstract

This study investigates how several dimensions of gender, including an individual's sex, gender ideology, and the gender composition of an occupation, influence the accommodations people make in reconciling employment and family life. Using data from the 1996 General Social Survey, we find that women and men sometimes make different kinds of job-family trade-offs, that people in male-dominated occupations make more family trade-offs and fewer employment trade-offs than people in other occupations, and that individual gender attitudes have little effect on job-family trade-offs. Our findings illustrate how gender, as an embedded social institution, contributes to the clash between employment and family responsibilities.