Sex role/work-role conflict in business and social work women managers

Abstract

This is an exploratory-descriptive study of the interrelationship of sex-role expectations and work-role expectations as sources for conflict in two categories of professional women; managers in business and social work.;A snowball sampling technique was used to gather data. The sample of 83 included 20 female and 20 male social workers, 21 female and 22 male business people.;The research instrument was made up of 4 objective measures: a work-role conflict index, a sex-role conflict scale, a successful manager descriptive index, and a manager self-assessment index.;Out of six tested, only two hypotheses were supported for both groups of professional women. First, women who viewed the desire for friendship as not being essential to their manager role, were low in sex-role conflict. Second, women who had the role expectation of being competitive, aggressive, and had a strong desire for responsibility and leadership, were low in both sex-role and work-role conflict.;A third hypothesis was supported for business women but not for social work women. Business women who had personality characteristics that were consistent with the role expectations of successful male managers were low in work-role conflict. Conversely, social work women with the role expectations of successful male managers were high in work-role conflict.;No significant differences were found between men and women on the sex-role conflict variables: fear of antagonizing others, success avoidance behavior, and anxiety response to success.;This investigation is a contribution to the theory of social work practice with gainfully employed women. Findings support the assumption that for women in the workplace, healthy, conflict-free behavior is independent of sex-role.