Gender Roles' Impact on Guilt

Men and women are equal. Or are they? In my previous post, I explored why women feel guilty when their work interferes with their personal life. But I neglected to discuss men's feelings toward work's interference with family time and why women still feel guiltier than men.

In a March 9th article by Meredith Melnick called "Why Women Feel More Guilty About Taking Work Home," she cited the University of Toronto study that concluded that women do have more guilt than men.

Women manage all aspects of their lives just as well as men, yet they have more negative feelings about being contacted after hours. Melnick added that women feel distress even if their work doesn't interfere with their family time.


A woman's traditional role.
From Chattahbox.com

This distress could be caused by remaining traditional gender roles, though times have changed since Leave it to Beaver.

Women are no longer expected to remain at home to raise children or to be responsible for all domestic work. Despite changing attitudes towards women's roles, old traditions die hard. Women still feel it is their duty to raise their children. When work interferes with that innate duty, the result is guilt.

Men, on the other hand, have historically been the breadwinners and protectors of the family and their role hasn't changed as drastically as women's. So when work interrupted their family time, it was expected that the breadwinner will just take care of business, leaving the mother with the children. Now, with both parents working in many families, who will tend the children while the other works? How parents answer this question could lead to conflict.

In 2008, 59 percent of fathers in dual-income families reported interference between work and family life compared to 35 percent of fathers in 1977, said a March 26, 2009 article from USAToday. The article explains the increase:


Changing gender roles from Cartoonstock.com

It does signal more equality of expectations — that men are no longer let off the hook," says Scott Coltrane, a sociologist at the University of Oregon.

Up until the past decade, "men weren't doing enough to add stress to their lives," he says.

Since then, men have been spending more time with their children and more time caretaking, which the survey finds has elevated the inner strife.

Women's guilt in response to work interfering with family time likely derives from remaining gender roles. Men are also feeling conflict because they are now expected to do more housework and more caretaking than in previous decades.

However, men and women agree on the changing gender roles. Overall, society is more accepting of working women, domestic dads, and dual-income families. More information on gender role statistics can be found here.

Women Feel Guiltier Than Men



Today's definition of "mom."



The definition of being a woman has evolved greatly in the past fifty years. They do housework, take care of children, run errands, and work outside the home, creating an added stress when work takes time away from home.

A longitudinal study, conducted in 2005 and 2007, was led by professor Scott Schieman from the University of Toronto. The study was released in the March issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior and featured in an article from CTVNews.com. The study suggests that women have more difficulty with the flexibility of technology, which allows for continuous contact with work. Schieman said:

We found that there was an association between receiving work-related contact and guilt for women. We didn't find that association for men. And then we also found it for distress as well.

But the researchers did not find the same results among men. Though men may still feel stressed when work emails pop up on their BlackBerrys during off hours, they do not experience the same level of guilt as moms do. In a March 9th ABC News article, Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, co-director of the perinatal psychiatry program at the University of North Carolina Center for Women's Mood Disorders, commented:

A lot of this stress may also have to do with role perception. There's the notion that mothers should be at home caring for the child more so than fathers, who work to provide for the family. These are stereotypes, but these societal influences are still there.

Meltzer-Brody has a point. Society still expects women to take care of the family, with or without children, work, be independent, and take care of the house. Technology can help women manage their time because tasks do not take as long and there is an option of working from home.

However, some guilt doesn't have to be bad. A November 2011 article from stuff.co.nz said feeling guilt is a sign of responsibility. If I called in sick so I could go to a concert, I would feel guilty. I would feel responsible. Mothers who feel guilty about doing work outside of the office feel a responsibility for the well-being of their children. A little guilt is ok, but too much weighs on the health and happiness of the entire family.

Below are tips to regain balance between life and work.

• Tell your employer you are unavailable during non-working hours except in an emergency.
• Set a routine so you don't do any work at home unless your children are playing with friends or sleeping.
• Give yourself a half-hour to an hour to relax.
• Do a fun activity with your kids every day.

For additional tips, click here.

Smartphones Tip the Balance

"New report: Smartphones increase workload and decrease productivity." This 2011 headline of a story from responsesource.com seems like quite the paradox. Smartphones aren't helping us and aren't making us smarter? You might not think it possible, but it very well could be.

A UK study suggests that the mere ownership of a BlackBerry or other smartphone does not decrease our workload, but actually increases our workload because we tend to check email more frequently, we're available all day every day, and our bosses know it, making us even more connected to our smartphones. However, Ian Price found that smartphones are not the answer to work/life balance.

Price conducted the study and wrote about the findings in his book The Activity Illusion. He found that smartphones do decrease anxiety about an influx of emails waiting to be read. However, this leads to a significant amount of time working during off-hours, taking time away from family, friends, and relaxing.

In the video below, Price succinctly states his interest in the psychology behind our new media and how social norms have not been developed for how to use the new technology.

Notice how he discussed social norms and the stigma surrounding people if they don't have others constantly in contact with them. In today's technology-ridden world, it's hard to unplug from devices. Unfortunately, men may be worse for wear when it comes to new media.

Studies show that career women are happier than career men. A 2011 CareerBliss of Irvine study of more than 200,000 company reviews, "reveals that overall, women outrank men in all factors of career happiness, specifically in areas concerning work-life balance, flexibility with their work schedule, career advancement and job security."



Divide App for Android

Some of the findings could be due in part to traditional families where the husband feels the duty to work harder or longer to provide more income. The difference in happiness could be related to technology use as well. Women tend to use technology to nurture relationships or to seek emotional bonds while men tend to use technology for informational purposes such as staying in touch with the office after hours. This could, in turn, lead to Price's argument regarding the social norms of using smartphones. But companies aren't focusing on the social norms but rather new interfaces for smartphones.



Enterproid, a start-up company in New York, is already dividing work from personal life with an app which will launch on the Android. The app creates two environments or profiles: one for your personal information and one for corporate information. Whichever profile is in use is protected from the rest of the phone. The hope is that you no longer have to worry about mixing personal and business life.

Of course, this doesn't solve the deeper problem of when technology is in use and for what purpose. Simply because you can separate personal and corporate information on your phone doesn't mean that you can separate the physical realities of work and life.