Gender Matters: The Effects Of Gender And Segmentation Preferences On Work-To-Family Conflict In Family Sacrifice Climates

Despite work-family research focusing on family-friendly climates, many employees work under a family sacrifice climate, facing employer pressure to put the demands of work before the demands of family and leading to increased work-to-family conflict. A family sacrifice climate enforces consistent behavioural expectations across all employees in the form of family domain boundaries being permeable to work and work domain boundaries being impermeable to family. However, employees likely experience family sacrifice climates differently. Drawing on the boundary theory and social role theory, we investigate how individual differences in gender and boundary management preferences interact to shape the relationship between perceived family sacrifice climate at work and work-to-family conflict in a two-wave sample of 157 professional employees. Results show women experience more work-to-family conflict from perceived family sacrifice climate than men, and segmentation preferences further shape this relationship but in opposite ways for men and women. Results indicate higher segmentation preferences are associated with a stronger relationship between family sacrifice climate and work-to-family conflict for women but a weaker relationship for men. We discuss implications of these findings for understanding the role of organizational climate in creating gendered work-family experiences. Practitioner points Some employees are more susceptible to undesirable effects of family sacrifice climate than others. Women compared to men are more likely to experience increased work-to-family conflict when they perceive their workplaces to have a family sacrifice climate. In family sacrifice workplace climates, women who prefer to segment work from family demands experience the greatest amount of work-to-family conflict while men who also prefer to segment work from family demands experience the lowest amount of work-to-family conflict.