Sex-Role Attitudes and Employment Status as Predictors of Perceived Life Satisfaction among Married Women In Korea

Abstract

This study investigates the relationships among women's sex-role attitudes, employment status, and overall life satisfaction, controlling for some selected background characteristics. Data were collected from currently married women living in Seoul. Women's sex-role attitudes were unrelated to employment status, and no significant relationship was observed between women's sex-role attitudes and satisfaction with marriage, family, work and overall life. However, controlling for women's employment status, sex-role attitudes were related to work satisfaction, but only among full-time housewives. Women's employment status had a significant influence on satisfaction with work and with overall life, but not with marriage and family life. Controlling for a woman's voluntariness in her choice of working, significant differences in marital satisfaction (MSAT), work satisfaction (WSAT), index of general affect (fGA), and index of well-being (fWB) between working and nonworking women were found. A woman's educational attainment was positively related to her sex-role attitudes, but not with her employment status. Father's and husband's education had negative impacts on a woman's employment status. Husband's socioeconomic status also negatively influenced a woman's likelihood of employment. However, mother's working experience and parents' encouragement for a woman to work were positively related to woman's work status. Parents' encouragement also significantly influenced woman's sex-role attitudes.