Roles and work-family conflict: how role salience and gender come into play

In this study, we explored how the salience of work and family roles relate to work-family conflict and whether and how these relationships differ for men and women. Conducting latent class cluster analysis in a sample of 251 working professionals across three organizations, we identified four profiles of employees who differed on relative salience of work and family roles. Respondents who organized their roles in a salience hierarchy and assigned greater salience to either the work or family role (i.e., those in a profile of predominant work salience or predominant family salience) were found to experience less work-family conflict as compared to those assigning high levels of salience to both roles (i.e., profile of dual high-salience) or those assigning low levels of salience to both roles (i.e., profile of dual low-salience). Results suggest that clarifying priorities between work and family roles may result in less work-family conflict. Moreover, findings show that contrary to the traditional view of gender and work-family conflict, organizing work and family roles in a salience hierarchy with a predominant non-traditional gender role is associated with less work-family conflict, especially for women. Implications of these findings for research and practice were discussed.