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This article was downloaded by: [Heriot-Watt University]On: 04 October 2014, At: 16:13Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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The Impact of Resources on Women'sStrategies for Coping With Work–HomeConflict: Does Sociocultural ContextMatter?Liat Kulik aa School of Social Work, Bar-Ilan University , Ramat Gan , IsraelPublished online: 05 Jun 2012.
To cite this article: Liat Kulik (2012) The Impact of Resources on Women's Strategies for CopingWith Work–Home Conflict: Does Sociocultural Context Matter?, Journal of Family Social Work, 15:3,217-234, DOI: 10.1080/10522158.2012.676612
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The Impact of Resources on Women’sStrategies for Coping With Work–Home
Conflict: Does Sociocultural Context Matter?
LIAT KULIKSchool of Social Work, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
The study examined differences in the impact of resources onstrategies for coping with work–home conflict (WHC) among Jew-ish (n¼ 59) and Muslim Arab (n¼ 87) women from dual-earnerfamilies in Israel. A distinction was made between three main typesof coping strategies: taking initiative, help seeking (active strate-gies), and redefinition (a passive strategy). The explanatory vari-ables were personal resources (hardiness, gender-role ideology,and income advantage) and environmental resources (supportfrom the husband, egalitarian division of labor, and flexibilityin the workplace). The research variables correlated mainly withthe strategy of help seeking among the Jewish women and withthe strategy of redefinition among the Arab women.
KEYWORDS Jewish women, coping strategies, Muslim Arabwomen, work–home conflict
Western countries have witnessed far-reaching changes in gender roles in thecontemporary era, as reflected in the increasing prevalence of dual-earnerfamilies. Nonetheless, the perception that women bear the primary responsi-bility for the household chores has not changed significantly in most societies(Nordenmark, 2002). The simultaneous demands of home and the workplacehave caused women to experience an internal role conflict, which has beenreferred to in the literature as ‘‘work–home conflict’’ (henceforth WHC;Greenhaus & Powell, 2006). Research conducted in Western countries hasrevealed that active coping strategies, which focus on solving the problemthat creates strain, are usually more effective than passive strategies, which
Address correspondence to Liat Kulik, School of Social Work, Bar-Ilan University,Ramat Gan, Israel. E-mail: [email protected]
Journal of Family Social Work, 15:217–234, 2012Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1052-2158 print=1540-4072 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10522158.2012.676612
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only focus on changing attitudes toward the stressful situation and its conse-quences (Bernas & Major, 2000).
A key concept used in examining the different approaches to coping withconflicts is the concept of coping resources (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Theprevailing assumption is that the more resources individuals have, the bettertheir coping abilities will be, particularly the ability for active coping. More-over, in the attempt to identify the different factors that affect women’s effortsto cope with WHC, recent studies have revealed that, besides resources, cul-ture has a strong impact on that experience (for a review, see Spector et al.,2005). For example, cultural values may influence the way individuals perceiveWHC. According to cultural orientations, WHC can either be perceived as athreat or as an opportunity for personal growth (Yang, 2005). Consequently,in familistic societies the sense of conflict among women is generated by fail-ure to meet family obligations (for a review, see Aycan, 2008).
In addition to affecting perceptions of WHC, cultural context can alsoinfluence the actual process of coping with WHC. The underlying assump-tion of this study was that gender stratification in specific social contexts willbe relevant to understanding cultural differences in coping. Chafetz (1984)developed a scientific model of gender stratification, which argues that thereis a critical link between macro- and microlevel coercive processes on theone hand and voluntary individual processes on the other. Chafetzdistinguished among three interrelated aspects of gender definitions. The firstaspect is gender ideology, which refers to beliefs about the basic, andpresumably biological, differences between men and women. The seconddefinition refers to gender norms, as expressed in expectations regardingthe appropriate and proper ways for men and women to behave. The thirddefinition relates to gender stereotypes, which accentuate the differencesbetween men and women in terms of how they will generally respond incertain situations. According to Chafetz, the higher the level of consensusregarding these gender definitions among members of a given population,and the more gender differences are presumed by individuals to be ‘‘justthe way the sexes are,’’ the more power these definitions have to influencemacro- and microlevel social processes that sustain gender inequality. Whenthis occurs, patterns of gender stratification become consolidated and arereflected in a distinction between liberal versus patriarchal contexts.
Previous studies conducted in Israel among the population of this studyrevealed that Muslim Arab women use more passive strategies for copingwith WHC than do Jewish Israeli women (Kulik & Rayyan, 2006). Moreover,Muslim Arab women have fewer resources at their disposal than do JewishIsraeli women (Kulik, 2007). Part of the explanation for these findings relatesto their status as minorities (Essed, 1991) and to their social exclusion andisolation from mainstream Jewish society. However, another part of theexplanation relates to differences between Jewish and Arab society in Israelwith regard to gender stratification. Whereas Arab society in Israel is known as a
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gender-stratified context that adheres to patriarchal values, Jewish society ischaracterized by relatively liberal gender roles and gender ideology despite itsfamilistic orientation (Lavee & Katz, 2003). Hence, the main question underlyingthis studywas, ‘‘In addition to the above-mentioned differences betweenMuslimArab and Jewish Israeli women in coping strategies and resource allocation, isthe impact of the Muslim Arab patriarchal sociocultural context on the way thatwomen translate the resources at their disposal into strategies for coping withWHC different from that of the more liberal Jewish sociocultural context?’’
The Conceptual Framework
Rodman’s (1972) classic resource theory in sociocultural context was adoptedas the conceptual framework to examine the differential impact of resourceson the use of active versus passive strategies for coping with WHC.According to that theory, which was originally conceptualized to examinespousal power relations, women translate resources into a marital poweradvantage mostly in social contexts where liberal gender-role attitudesprevail. In traditional social contexts, however, women’s resources do notaffect marital power to the same extent (Burr, Astern, & Knaves, 1977). Thisstudy took the theory one step further and tested its validity in the broadercontext of women’s resources and strategies for coping with WHC. Basedon that rationale, sociocultural context is assumed to determine the extentto which women utilize the resources at their disposal to cope with WHC.Specifically, it was hypothesized that in modern sociocultural contexts, theimpact of women’s resources on the use of active strategies for coping withWHC will be greater than in traditional social contexts. As a multiculturalsociety, Israel provides fertile ground for examining this issue.
The Israeli Context: Tradition Versus Modernity
The multicultural character of Israeli society is expressed in its demographiccomposition. In Israel, there is a major social divide between the Jewishmajority population (80%) and the Arab minority population, which itselfis divided into several religious groups: Muslims (75%), Christians (16%),and others (9%) (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2008). Because Muslimsmake up the vast majority of the Arab population in Israel, all of the Arabparticipants in this study were Muslim. Among Muslim Arabs in Israel, asin other Arab societies in the Middle East, the status and role of womenare governed by religious Islamic laws, and by traditional patriarchal andauthoritarian norms (Abu-Jaber Najem, 2006). Nonetheless, in Israel therehave been gradual changes in patterns of employment outside of the homeamong Arab women, which reflect some improvement in the status ofwomen in Arab society compared with the previous generation (Tamir,2007). As for Jewish society in Israel, processes of modernization have led
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to far-reaching changes in the status of women, as reflected in earningpatterns among couples. There are dual-earner families in which bothspouses earn equal wages, as well as families in which the woman is themain provider (Stier, 2010). Nonetheless, the living conditions and level ofservices provided to Arab residents of Israel, as well as their political statusand education levels, are much lower than among the Jewish population(Lewin-Epstein & Semyonov, 1994).
Given the cultural differences in women’s status, the following was themain question examined in this study: Do the personal and environmentalresources available to Jewish and Arab women from dual earner familieshave a differential impact on the strategies they adopt for coping withWHC? Two major types of strategies, active and passive, were considered(Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The active strategies included actual attemptsto solve conflicts: taking initiative, and help seeking to promote a solution.The passive strategies included attempts to change attitudes about the nega-tive consequences of the conflict through cognitive redefinition of the con-flictual situation in a less stressful way. Two broad categories of copingresources, personal and environmental, were considered. Focusing on differ-ences in the translation of resources into effective coping strategies by socio-cultural context broadened the examination of the well known impact ofgender stratification context on the way that women allocate resources(Kulik, 2007), as well as on women’s use of coping strategies to alleviatestress in their daily lives (Kulik & Rayyan, 2006).
PERSONAL RESOURCES
Personal resources relate to personality characteristics or attitudes held by theindividual, which can help mitigate the sense of conflict. In this study,personal resources included the women’s hardiness, income advantage overthe husband, and gender-role ideology.
Hardiness. This personal resource mitigates stress and consists of threepersonality characteristics. Commitment is manifested by the completeinvolvement of the individual in the different aspects of life such as familyand work. Control is the sense of mastery over one’s environment, and theability to influence the course of events in one’s life; and challenge is mani-fested in a personal outlook that values change as a necessary requisite forpersonal development (Kobasa, 1982). According to Kobasa (1982), whenthese personality characteristics are combined, they form an integrativeconstruct in which the three components are interrelated.
The wife’s income advantage over her husband. The entry of womeninto the labor market has created new patterns that differ from the traditional
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pattern in which the husband is the sole or main provider. Thus, in manycases the wife’s share of the family income is similar to or even greater thatof her husband (Stier, 2010). Although the new earning patterns are not asprevalent as the traditional one, they can be found among Jewish couplesas well as among Arab couples in Israel (Kulik & Rayyan, 2003). Notably,the wife’s income advantage over her husband can be considered as aresource, because it gives her a better negotiating position and enables herto purchase services and pay for help in the home as needed.
Gender-role ideology. Gender-role ideology is defined as generalizedperceptions about the social roles of men and women in a given societyand is transmitted in a process of socialization (Mischel, 1967). Patriarchalsocieties block opportunities for women to attain resources and adhere tonorms that minimize women’s contribution to the family and society. Eventhough gender-role ideology essentially reflects perceptions of gender roles,egalitarian gender-role ideology among women can be considered as a kindof resource because it contributes to women’s emotional well-being (Baruch& Barnett, 1978), to their sense of independence, their self-esteem, and toactive patterns of coping with crises (Kulik, 2004).
ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES
Environmental resources refer to contextual characteristics that promotecoping with stressful situations. In this study, these resources includedspousal support, egalitarian division of household tasks, family support,and support from the workplace (flextime).
Spousal support. Because the burden of child care still falls squarely onthe woman’s shoulders, even among couples with an egalitarian gender-roleideology, most studies in the field have focused on the husband’s support asa resource that can empower the wife in her attempt to mitigate WHC (for areview, see Crompton, 2006).
Family support. Family support is an important source of assistance foremployed women (Voydanoff, 2002). This kind of support is provided bymembers of the extended family and includes the following dimensions:emotional support, informative support (e.g., teaching the woman how tohandle household affairs), and instrumental support (e.g., actual help withhousework and child care; House, 1981).
Division of household tasks. Although the division of household tasksreflects a structural dimension of family life, an egalitarian division of house-
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hold tasks can be viewed as a type of environmental resource that makes thewomen’s life easier, enhances their sense of worth, and encourages them toadopt active strategies for coping with WHC (Kulik & Rayyan, 2003).
Support from the workplace. Flexible work patterns can take differentforms and allow individuals to vary their arrival and departure from work,usually with the provision that everyone works a specified quota of hoursa day. Cook (1992) claimed that these arrangements are particularly helpfulto women and enable them to adjust their work schedules to fit the schedulesof their children.
Research Hypotheses
1. The more access women have to personal resources (hardiness, incomeadvantage over the husband, and liberal gender-role ideology), the morethey will adopt active strategies for resolving WHC.
2. The more access women have access to environmental resources (spousalsupport, family support, an egalitarian division of household tasks, andworkplace support), the more they will adopt active strategies forresolving WHC.
3. In light of the patriarchal character of Muslim Arab culture, the relation-ships between personal and environmental resources and the tendencyto adopt active strategies for resolving WHC will be stronger for Jewishwomen than for Muslim Arab women.
METHOD
Research Sample and Data Collection
Data were collected as part of a larger project that compared the impact ofworkplace demands on marital relations among Jewish and Muslim Arabwomen from dual-earner families in Israel. The sample consisted of 189women who worked at the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Health.Participants in this study were matched; selection was based on the followingcriteria, married women with children and both spouses worked outside ofthe home. Following the matching procedure, the final sample included146 women (59 Jewish, and 87 Muslim Arab). The average age of Jewishwomen was 36.5 years (SD¼ 8.32); the average age of the Muslim Arabwomen was 35.2 (SD¼ 7.8). The average number of children was 2.6(SD¼ 1.8) in the Jewish women’s families and 3.3 (SD¼ 1.5) in the familiesof the Muslim Arab women. The Arab participants were educated residentsof five villages in the central and northern regions of Israel. All of them wereproficient in Hebrew. Most of the questionnaires were distributed to women
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in their workplaces. The time allotted to complete the questionnaire wasabout 20 minutes and the response rate was 80%.
Instruments
COPING STRATEGIES
This variable was measured by Hall’s (1972) questionnaire, which addressedstyles of coping with WHC, including 22 items describing different strategiesfor coping with stress generated by conflicting demands of work and home.Participants were asked to indicate how often they used a specific strategy,on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (almost never) to 5 (almost always).Principal component analysis with varimax rotation revealed three factors thatexplained 72% of the variance (eigenvalue >1), taking initiative (henceforth‘‘initiative’’), active attempts to mitigate the conflict between work and home,for example, trying new ways of behavior to meet demands; requests for helpfrom family members or colleagues to meet the demands of home and work(henceforth ‘‘help seeking’’), for example, ‘‘asking a family member [or col-league] to help you meet demands’’; and redefinition, attempts to redefinerole demands to minimize the intensity of the conflict (e.g., ‘‘easing the criteriafor evaluating yourself’’). By nature, the first two strategies are active, whereasthe last strategy is passive. One score was derived for each strategy by calcu-lating the mean of all of the items on each factor. The higher the score, themore the participant used this type of strategy. Cronbach’s alpha reliabilityvalues were .88, .78, and .83, respectively for initiative, help seeking, andredefinition, among the sample of Jewish women, and .89, .82, and .84,respectively, among the sample of Arab women.
HARDINESS
Hardiness was examined through the Third Generation Hardiness Scale(Kahn, 1986). This instrument, based on the theoretical approach of Kobasa(1982), consisted of three subquestionnaires measuring three components ofthe concept, control, commitment, and challenge. One score was derived bycalculating the mean of the items on each factor. The higher the score, thegreater the extent of hardiness. The Cronbach’s alpha internal consistencyvalue of the questionnaire used in this study was .84, and .86 among thesample of Muslim Arab and Jewish women, respectively.
INCOME ADVANTAGE
This variable was measured by responses to the question, ‘‘Who contributesmore to the family income?’’ Responses were based on a 5-point scaleranging from 1 (husband contributes much more than wife) to 5 (wife
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contributes much more than husband). The higher the score, the greater thewife’s income advantage over her husband.
GENDER-ROLE IDEOLOGY
The questionnaire was developed by Kulik (1995) and included six itemsrelated to gender-role attitudes in various areas, such as women’s employ-ment outside of the home and parental responsibility for child care (e.g.,‘‘Both husband and wife should share the same degree of responsibility forsupporting the family’’). Responses were based on a 5-point scale, rangingfrom 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). In this study, the Cronbach’salpha reliability of the questionnaire was .89 for Jewish women and .82 forMuslim Arab women. The higher the score, the more liberal the participant’sgender-role ideology.
PERCEIVED SPOUSAL SUPPORT
One question evaluated the general extent of perceived spousal support.Responses were based on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (to a great extent)to 5 (not at all). The higher the score, the greater the extent of perceivedspousal support.
PERCEIVED FAMILY SUPPORT
One question evaluated the perceived support from the extended family.Responses were based on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (to a great extent)to 5 (not at all). The higher the score, the greater the extent of perceivedfamily support.
DIVISION OF HOUSEHOLD TASKS
This variable was measured on the basis of a 19-item questionnaireconstructed by Mann-Kanovitz (1977), adapted by Kulik (2007). The scalewas designed so that 1 represented a very nonegalitarian division ofhousehold tasks and 4 represented equality in division of household tasks.One score was derived by computing the mean of the responses on all itemsin the scale; the higher the score, the more egalitarian the division of house-hold tasks. In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha reliability of the questionnairewas .89 for Jewish women, and .82 for Muslim Arab women.
SUPPORT FROM THE WORKPLACE (FLEXTIME AND FLEXPLACE)
This seven-item instrument was developed for this study to examine thedegree of flexibility in workplaces based on criteria such as opportunities
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to set flexible arrival and departure times and the opportunity to take somework home. Responses were based on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (never)to 7 (almost always). One score was derived by computing the mean of theresponses to all seven items in the scale: the higher the score, the more flex-ible the women’s work schedule. The Cronbach’s alpha reliability value ofthe questionnaire was .86 among the sample of Jewish women, and .83among the sample of Arab women.
FINDINGS
Correlations Between the Independent Research Variables andStrategies for Coping With WHC (Hypotheses 1–2)
Pearson’s correlations between the independent research variables (personaland environmental resources) and strategies for coping with WHC werecalculated separately for each of the two groups of women (see Table 1).This method was used to examine the research hypotheses relating to therelationship between personal and environmental resources and strategiesfor resolving WHC.
JEWISH WOMEN
Hardiness, spousal support, family support, gender-role ideology, anddivision of household tasks correlated positively with the strategy ofhelp-seeking. Thus, the higher the women’s reported levels of hardinessand the higher the levels of support they received from their husbandsand families, the greater their tendency to use the strategy of help seeking.Moreover, this tendency was found among women who reported a rela-tively liberal gender-role ideology and egalitarian division of householdtasks. In addition, support from the workplace and egalitarian division ofhousehold tasks correlated positively with the coping strategy of initiative.Regarding background variables, the women’s levels of education corre-lated positively with help seeking. However, the number of children andwomen’s age correlated negatively with the use of that strategy; that is,the younger the women, the fewer children they had, the greater theirtendency to use the strategy of help seeking. Notably, no significant corre-lations were found between the independent research variables and thestrategy of redefinition among the Jewish women.
MUSLIM ARAB WOMEN
Among the Muslim Arab women, spousal support and support from theworkplace correlated positively with the strategy of redefinition. In addition,the wife’s income advantage over her husband correlated negatively with
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redefinition. The greater the wife’s income advantage over husband, the lessshe tended to use that strategy. In addition, the findings indicated that themore egalitarian the division of household tasks and the more support thewives received from their husbands, the more they used the strategy of helpseeking. Of the background variables examined in the study, only thewomen’s age correlated positively with the strategy of redefinition. The olderthe women, the greater their tendency to use that strategy.
In sum, the number of significant correlations between the independentresearch variables and strategies for coping with WHC was greater among theJewish women than among the Muslim Arab women. In addition, among theJewish women, most of the significant correlations between the independentvariables and coping strategies related to the active strategy of help seeking.Among the Muslim Arab women, in contrast, most of the significant correla-tions related to the passive strategy of redefinition.
The Combined Contribution of the Independent Research Variablesto Explaining Strategies for Coping With WHC (Hypothesis 3)
To examine the combined contribution of the independent researchvariables to explaining Jewish and Muslim Arab women’s strategies forcoping with WHC, hierarchical regressions were conducted separately foreach strategy. Regression analysis was used as a basis for examiningHypothesis 3, which posited that Jewish and Muslim Arab women woulddiffer with regard to the contribution of personal and environmentalresources to explaining strategies for resolving WHC.
TABLE 1 Pearson’s Correlations Between the Independent Research Variables and CopingStrategies
Arab Muslim Jewish
Variables InitiativeHelp
seeking Redefinition InitiativeHelp
seeking Redefinition
ResourcesHardiness �.09 .07 �.05 �.15 .30� .07Spousal support .02 .20� .29�� �.13 .39�� .20Family support .04 .14 .04 �.15 .30� .20Support from the workplace �.02 .05 .25� .31�� .01 .17Income advantage .07 .17 �.22� .18 .08 �.12Gender-role ideology .02 .15 .07 �.21 .23� .12Division of household tasks .06 .32�� .05 .23� .28� .15Background variablesAge .13 .12 .23� .13 �.35�� .01Number of children �.18 .08 .09 .16 �.35�� .07Education .01 .12 .05 .07 .32�� .14
�p< .05. ��p< .01.
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In the first step, the background variables of women’s age, number ofchildren, and education were entered. By entering these variables in the firststep, it was possible to examine the overall contribution of the women’sbackground characteristics to explaining the variance in the dependentvariables on the one hand, and to partial out the contribution of thosevariables in subsequent steps on the other hand. In the second step, socio-cultural context was entered (Muslim Arabs were coded as 0, Jews werecoded as 1). In the third step, personal and environmental resources wereentered (hardiness, wife’s income advantage, women’s gender-role ideology,spousal support, family support, workplace support, and equality in divisionof household tasks). In the fourth step, the interactions between theindependent variables and sociocultural context were entered. This wasdone to examine whether the contribution of the independent variables (per-sonal and environmental resources as well as background variables) to
TABLE 2 Regression Coefficients for Variables That Explain the Strategy of Help Seeking
Step Predictors b SED b R2 DR2
1 Age .01 .01 .07 .02 .02Number of children .04 .05 .09Education .11 .10 .11
2 Age .01 .01 .02 .14 .12Number of children .00 .05 .01Education .03 .10 .03Sociocultural context .44 .13 .36��
3 Age .01 .01 .03 .29 .15Number of children .01 .05 .01Education �.01 .10 �.01Sociocultural context .38 .18 .32�
Hardiness �.33 .27 �.15Income advantage �.08 .07 �.12Spousal support .13 .07 .21�
Family support .08 .04 .18Support from the workplace .05 .09 .08Gender-role attitudes .12 .11 .15Division of household tasks .18 .15 .15
4 Age .01 .01 .15 .42 .12Number of children .02 .05 .05Education .10 .10 .10Sociocultural context .08 .20 .07Hardiness �.34 .26 �.16Income advantage �.07 .06 �.11Spousal support .07 .07 .11Family support .03 .04 .07Support from the workplace .08 .08 .12Gender-role attitudes .15 .10 .19Division of household tasks .17 .14 .15Age� Sociocultural Context �.21 .06 �.38��
Age�Hardiness .16 .07 .22�
�p< .05. ��p< .01.
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explaining the variance in coping with WHC differs for Jewish versus MuslimArab women.
INITIATIVE
The independent research variables explained only 11% of the variance ininitiative, less than the amounts of variance found for the other two copingstrategies examined in the study. The background variables, which wereentered in the first step, explained 2% of the variance in initiative and theircontribution was not significant (R2¼ .02, p> 0.05). Sociocultural context,which was entered in the second step, explained 5% of the variance in initiat-ive, over and above the amount of variance explained by the backgroundvariables (R2¼ .07, p< 0.05; DR2¼ .07, p< 0.05). In the third step, theresources explained 4% of the variance, over and above the variance thatwas explained by the variables in the previous steps. However, none ofthe resources contributed significantly to explaining the variance in initiative(R2¼ .11, p> 0.05; DR2¼ .04, p> 0.05). Notably, none of the interactionsbetween sociocultural context and the independent research variablescontributed significantly to explaining the variance in the strategy ofinitiative. This finding indicates that the contribution of those variables toexplaining the variance in use of initiative as a strategy for coping withWHC was similar for the Jewish and Muslim Arab women.
HELP SEEKING
The independent research variables explained 42% of the variance in the useof this strategy, larger than the amounts of variance found for the other twocoping strategies examined in the study. The background variables, enteredin the first step, explained 2% of the variance in the use of this strategy andtheir contribution was not significant (R2¼ .02, p> .05). Sociocultural context,which was entered in the second step, explained 12% of the variance in the useof help seeking, and its contribution was significant (R2¼ .14, p< 0.01;DR2¼ .12, p< 0.01). The directions of the beta coefficients revealed that theJewish women showed a greater tendency to use the strategy of help seekingthan did the Muslim Arab women. In the third step, the resource variablesexplained 15% of the variance, over and above the variance that was explainedby the variables in the previous steps (R2¼ .29, p< 0.01; DR2¼ .15, p< 0.05).However, the only resource that contributed significantly was spousal support.The directions of the beta coefficients revealed that the more the womenreceived support from their husbands, the greater their tendency to ask forhelp. In the fourth step, the contribution of two interactions was significant,the interaction between Sociocultural Context and the Woman’s Age and theinteraction between Sociocultural Context and Hardiness. Those interactionsexplained 15% of the variance, over and above the amount explained by
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the variables in the previous steps (R2¼ .41, p< 0.001; DR2¼ .12, p< 0.05). Toexamine the source of the interaction between the woman’s age and sociocul-tural context, Pearson’s correlations between age and help seeking were cal-culated separately for the Jewish and Muslim Arab women. The analysesrevealed a significant negative correlation between those variables amongthe Jewish women (r¼�.35, p< 0.01), but not among the Muslim Arabwomen. Hence, the contribution of age to explaining the variance in helpseeking depended on sociocultural context. Similarly, a significant correlationbetween hardiness and sociocultural context was found among the Jewishwomen (r¼ .30, p< 0.01), but not among the Muslim Arab women. Here,too, the contribution of hardiness to explaining the variance in help seekingdepended on sociocultural context.
REDEFINITION
Taken together, the research variables explained 29% of the variance in theuse of redefinition. The background variables, entered in the first step,explained 1% of the variance in the use of that strategy and their contributionwas not significant (R2¼ .01, p> 0.05). Sociocultural context, which wasentered in the second step, explained 12% of the variance in the use of rede-finition, and its contribution was significant (R2¼ .13, p< 0.05; DR2¼ .12,p< 0.05). The directions of the beta coefficients revealed that the Muslim Arabwomen showed a greater tendency to use the strategy of redefinition than didthe Jewish women. In the third step, the resources explained 15% of the vari-ance, over and above the variance that was explained by the variables in theprevious steps. However, the only variables that contributed significantlywere spousal support and support from the workplace (R2¼ .29, p< 0.01;DR2¼ .17, p< 0.05). The directions of the beta coefficients revealed that themore the women received support from their husbands and from their work-places, the greater their tendency to use this strategy. No significant contribu-tions were found for any of the interactions between sociocultural context andthe independent research variables. This result indicates that the contributionof those variables to explaining the variance in the use of redefinition was notsignificantly different for the Jewish and Muslim Arab women (see Table 2).
DISCUSSION
Work–home conflict is a common phenomenon of modern life in manycountries and cultural contexts, especially for women. However, perceptionsand prevalence of WHC, as well as its antecedents and consequences, tend tovary across cultures. This study adopted a cross-cultural perspective toexplain the impact of culture values on strategies for coping with WHC, atopic that has not been addressed sufficiently in the research literature. In this
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study, cultural values were represented by the degree of gender stratificationin modern versus traditional sociocultural contexts of Israeli society. Specifi-cally, the impact of personal and environmental resources on the use ofstrategies for coping with WHC among Jewish versus Muslim Arab womenin Israel was compared.
In general, the findings indicated that the number of significant correla-tions between the explanatory variables (personal resources, environmentalresources, and background variables) and active coping strategies, asexpressed in taking initiative and help seeking, was greater among Jewishwomen than among Muslim Arab women. Evidently, women living in rela-tively modern societies regarding gender roles are able to channel theresources at their disposal toward coping with WHC by using more activestrategies, whereas women in relatively traditional societies refrain fromusing resources, even if they have access to them, possibly due to the culturalconstraints that affect the status of women. Thus, the findings supportedRodman’s (1972) resource theory in cultural context regarding the impactof gender stratification on women’s use of available resources and expandedthat theory to the issue of coping with WHC. At least with regard to one typeof active coping strategy, help seeking, the findings indicated that social con-text determines the extent to which women utilize the resources at theirdisposal to cope with WHC. That is, only Jewish women, who representthe modern sectors of Israeli society, utilized the resources at their disposalto cope actively with WHC by taking initiative and help seeking.
As for women’s gender-role ideology, contribution of that variable toexplaining the use of coping strategies was less significant than expectedamong both groups of women. Only among the Jewish women, gender-roleideology correlated significantly with the strategy of help seeking, but amongthe Muslim Arab women, gender-role ideology did not correlate significantlywith any of the strategies for coping with WHC. It is possible that because theJewish women tended to maintain a relatively egalitarian gender-role ideol-ogy, they felt that it is legitimate to ask for help from others to alleviate theirrole burden. In contrast, because the Muslim Arab women belong to atraditional, nonegalitarian society, they do not tend to ask for help fromothers to relieve themselves of the burden even when their gender-role atti-tudes are egalitarian. Apparently, relatively liberal Muslim Arab womenrefrained from help seeking because they recognized the traditional natureof their social surroundings, in which women are expected to bear fullresponsibility for managing household affairs.
For the women in both sociocultural contexts, the independent vari-ables best explained the strategy of help seeking, followed by redefinition.However, the coping strategy of initiative was least explained by theindependent variables. Therefore, in future research it would be worthwhileto investigate the potential sources of these active strategies on the basis ofvariables other than those examined in this study.
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The differences between Jewish and Muslim Arab women are alsoreflected in the correlation patterns found between their background vari-ables and strategies for coping with WHC. For example, age correlatednegatively with help seeking among Jewish women, and positively withredefinition among Muslim Arab women. As for the Jewish women, it canbe argued that the life experience they gained over the years worked to theiradvantage and strengthened their ability to cope independently with WHC.Therefore, the older they were, the less they needed help in coping withWHC. Regarding Muslim Arab women, it is possible that as they grow older,they understand that in their social milieu, the strategy of redefinition is moreeffective than active coping strategies. The finding that Jewish women with alarger number of children showed less of a tendency to use the strategy ofhelp seeking is also noteworthy. In that regard, it is possible that whenwomen have large families, the older children can provide assistance andenable the women to be less dependent on help from others. In addition,the cumulative experience that women gain when they raise a large numberof children enables them to cope with the burden of household tasks withoutasking for assistance from their extended families.
In sum, the findings indicate that cultural values, as manifested in theorientation toward gender roles in different sectors of the same society,can either encourage or prevent women from utilizing the resources at theirdisposal and from adopting active or passive strategies to mitigate WHC.
Before concluding, some limitations of the study need to beaddressed. First, the sample of participants was small, and it was not ran-dom. Moreover, the women participating in the study were from dual-earner families and had a relatively high level of education. Hence, theJewish and Muslim Arab participants represented middle-class families inboth sociocultural contexts. To generalize the findings to all Jewish andMuslim Arab women in Israel, future studies should be based on broader,more heterogeneous, and representative samples in terms of the women’seducation level and occupation.
Moreover, despite the differences that were found between the twogroups of women, they cannot be attributed only to the impact of socioculturalcontext on gender stratification. Even though a matching procedure was usedto select the women in each of the research groups so that the sample of part-icipants would be homogeneous in terms of levels of education and otherbackground characteristics, it is still important to bear in mind that Muslim Arabwomen belong to a minority in Israeli society. Members of ethnic minoritygroups can experience feelings of learned helplessness (Fernando, 1984) orhypervigilance (Essed, 1991) due to social exclusion and isolation frommainstream society. Specifically, the Muslim Arab women participating in thisstudy experienced deprivation on two levels: as a minority in Israeli society,and living in the gender-stratified sociocultural context of the Muslim Arabcommunity. The findings revealed that these conditions not only diminish
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the resources available to Muslim Arab women, as shown in previous studies(Kulik, 2007), but also prevent the women from effectively using the resourcesat their disposal in order to mitigate their daily stress.
Practical Recommendations
According to the findings of this study, practitioners should be aware that intraditional sectors of modern societies, even when women have extensivecoping resources, they are subject to cultural constraints that might preventthem from translating their resources into active coping strategies for mitigat-ing WHC. Practitioners in the field can apply this knowledge toward helpingwomen in traditional contexts become aware of the power inherent in theresources at their disposal, and toward encouraging them to use thoseresources in an attempt to cope with WHC. In so doing, the practitionersshould adopt a culturally sensitive approach, which does not contradictdeep-rooted value orientations.
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