Possible ways to manage personal gender-role conflicts in career development

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Possible ways to manage personal gender-role conflicts in career development

Oksana Chuyko

У статті здійснено теоретичний аналіз основних психологічних напрямів подолання гендерно-рольового конфлікту особистості у процесі розвитку кар'єри, виокремлених на основі причин та особливостей його вияву. Запропоновано розгляд даних напрямів на двох рівнях - особистісному і організаційному. Особистісний рівень включає формування мотивації досягнень та психологічних критеріїв успіху; формування емоційної компетентності; аналіз професійних та сімейних цінностей, визначення пріоритетних життєвих цілей; аналіз сімейних концепцій; сімейне консультування; психологічна робота з чоловічою аудиторією, спрямована на актуалізацію родительської ідентичності; формування рольової компетентності; тайм-менеджмент; психологічний аналіз гендерної ідентичності та гендерного досвіду особистості; подолання гендерних стереотипів. На організаційному рівні - формування «сприятливої» до сім 'ї корпоративної культури організації, опора на гендерно орієнтований підхід у супроводі персоналу.

Ключові слова: гендерно-рольовий конфлікт, гендерні норми, гендерні стереотипи, гендерна ідентичність, розвиток кар'єри.

The paper contributes to efforts to theoretically analyze possible psychological approaches personal gender-role conflict in career development, selected in terms of causes and peculiarities of its manifestation. We suggest considering such approaches at two levels - personal and organizational ones. Personal level involves generating achievement motivation and psychological criteria for success; developing emotional competence; analyzing career andfamily values, identifying immediate life goals; analyzing family concepts; family counseling; psychological work with men aimed at maintaining parental identity; developing role competence; time management; psychological analysis of individual gender identity and gender experience; challenging gender stereotypes. Organizational level includes developing family-friendly workplace culture, relying on gender-specific approach in staff coaching.

Keywords: gender-role conflict, gender norms, gender stereotypes, gender identity, career development.

1. Topic Outline

In this day and age, not with standing intensive public awareness campaign aimed at challenging gender stereotypes alongside with introduction of gender equality policies into various spheres of public life, male and female gender role standards are still observed and reflected in employment. Male and female gender role standards reflect expectations of the society about desirable behavior of a man or woman and do not always correspond to real needs and desires of a person, features of their gender identity, and thus contribute to a gen der-role conflict. Requirements applicable to a specialist in a particular industry might not correlate with gender characteristics of an individual. Furthermore, behavior of a man or woman in the workplace, especially in managerial positions, not always corresponds to socially expected gender role implementation models. Gender -role conflict experience becomes a psychological barrier to person's career development. The issue of developing psychological approaches, possible ways to manage personal gender-role conflict in professional development and career pursuit is getting even more relevant.

2. Recent research and literature analysis

In psychological science, the study of gender-role conflict of individual is based on the analysis of its causes and specific manifestation in men and women. In particular, emphasis is put on the impact of gender norms, gender roles, gender identity and gender stereotypes on personal gender-role conflict experiences. Specifically, a gender norm as a social and psychological phenomenon has been studied by Kletsina I., Ioffe E., Tkalych M., Burke Ronald J. Social and gender roles have been analyzed by Tkalych M., Scott J., Clery E., Eagly A. and others. Hovorun T., Kikinezhdi O., Tkalych M., Pampukha L., Heilman M., Ellemers N. have studied gender stereotypes underlying gender-role conflict. The nature of family-to-work conflict, its causes and triggers have been studied by Tkalych M., Pampukha L., Paludi M., Meeussen L, Veldman J. and Van Laar C, Steinberg J.R., True M., Russo N.F. and others. Kimmel M., Connell R., Hearn J., Pleck J., Pollack W., O'Neil J., Burke R.J. have explored the issue of masculinity, traditional masculine norms and their influence on health and career. A series of contributions deals with the significance of implementing gender equality policies in the Ukrainian labor market at the national level. Emphasis is made on the necessity to introduce gender-specific approach in corporate staff psychological coaching (Tkalych M.). The urgent issue of gender-role conflict of individual and its influence on career opportunities contribute to the importance of studying the ways to prevent and resolve such conflict.

Aim. Based on the theoretical analysis of literature in psychology, we aim to select possible ways to manage personal gender-role conflict in career development.

3. Data Statement

Based on the analysis of psychological nature of gender-role conflict, we were able to identify major problems that men and women face and which arise, on the one hand, due to social gender norms, stereotypes, expectations and peculiarities of personal gender identity and, on the other hand, because they cannot be followed. It is gender role standards that underlie gender -role conflict. The following are the most typical male gender role standards: constant striving for success, adherence to formal attributes of success; situation awareness, successful dealing with various problems and decision making; emotional control; physical vigor; homophobia, work-to-family conflict. The most common female gender role standards are: gender inequality in the labor market; family -to-work conflict in its different forms of expression, which is multi-dimensional and relates to female roles as wife, mother, housewife, as well as occupational role. Both men and women struggle to resolve the conflict between gender identity attributes (masculinity - femininity) [5; 8; 14; 17].

To find possible ways to manage gender-role conflict it is necessary to analyze and adjust its personal manifestations.

It is possible to resolve gender-role conflict at two levels:

- personal (individual counseling or group work aimed at reconciliation of gender and occupational roles, work with families);

- organizational (implementing gender equality policies in corporate culture, family-friendly organization, gender-specific approach in staff coaching).

According to the problems outlined, we suggest possible ways to manage gender-role conflict.

Possible Ways to Manage Gender-Role Conflict at Personal Level:

Achievement Moiivalion, Generating Psychological Criteria for Success. It is important for men to be aware of their own understanding of success, congruent with their personality and gender identity. It is worth analyzing psychological criteria for success conformable to values, desires, needs of an individual, rather than social expectations and stereotypes. It is practicable to analyze the ways to coordinate individual and socially desirable success criteria. It is necessary to study personal and organizational factors of achieving success by man, as well as their favorable and adverse effect and, accordingly, do psychological coaching of personal qualities and features contributing to harmonious success achievement.

Developing Emotional Competence, taken to mean person's willingness and ability to control and manage his or her own and other people's emotional responses in line with variable, changeable situations and circumstances. Emotional competence of an employee involves his or her deliberate willingness to display emotional competences necessary for effective career and addressing social issues [3]. It is often used to mean emotional control; however, what men need is an adequate display of emotions, as constant emotional restraint can lead to emotional accumulat ion, emotional exhaustion and stress. Emotions left without response are reflected in psychosomatics, certain bodily sensations. Emotional competence development involves awareness of one's own emotional responses, of the role emotions play in career and life in general; developing adequate identity-congruent emotional responses in accordance with the situation.

Analyzing Career and Family Values, Identifying Immediate Life Goals. Women often balance family and career and thus experience heavy load and stress, especially when mother's role is particularly important (with young children). Therefore, analyzing career and family values will help realize priorities for a certain life period in accordance with age and family status. Priorities should be chosen both in view of the specific family situation and with due regard to the general life context, life goals and prospects of a woman in particular and the family as a whole [16, p. 306-310].

For men, the work-to-life conflict is more poignant, so they should pay more attention to family communication. Career and family value analysis will help realize the importance of the family in the system of male values and understand the significance of sharing household chores and childrearing.

Family Counseling (Analyzing and Correcting Distribution of Family Functions and Roles). Family counseling can be done individually. However, in order to solve internal and sometimes family conflic t, women's balancing career and family roles, it is advisable to consult married couples.

During the counseling session it is necessary to study the current distribution of family functions and roles among all family members living together or influencing significantly spouses' performing their family functions. This will help both husband and wife realize the actual role distribution, as well as their attitude and emotional response to such distribution. In addition, it is important to identify the expectations both partners have about functional and role distribution, especially at the stage of a young family. Husband and wife often prove to have somewhat different ideas about their roles and contribution to family life, about possible balancing of career and family identity. The husband may think that it is his wife who should care about housekeeping and childrearing or balance work with family responsibilities rather than concentrate on her own career pursuit, while the wife may be focused on building a career and thus count on her husband's support. The above mentioned situation is most pressing for young families, but it can also arise at some further stages of family life, showing itself in hidden expectations and causing family conflicts [2; 16].

Family counseling and family therapy rely on various techniques: role playing games, family constellation, coaching, writing letters, narrative techniques (studying dominant beliefs, values, discourse, writing family history, re-structuring family history), etc. [16]. Alternatively, psychodiagnostic techniques can also be used to study family role distribution.

During the counseling session, it is important to focus on developing spouses' interlocutory skills, ability to express their needs, come to an agreement taking into consideration their own needs and needs of their partner, the family life stage, dominant priorities.

Analyzing Family Concepts can help study formation of ideas about male and female roles in the family and career, choice and development of constructive behavior patterns.

Family concepts (attitudes) of male and female professional development and career pursuit can be studied by means of a genogram. A genogram is used to analyze family history evolution, family development stages and peculiar relationship passed down from generation to generation, as well as the events prefacing family crisis and calling for psychological counseling [2, p. 58-62; 16, p. 193]. This method can help trace the inter-generational evolution of family attitudes in relation to the male and female role in career and family and see the relationship between attitudes and social and cultural context, since each generation lived in the period with somewhat different social values.

Psychological Counseling for Man aimed at maintaining parental identity. Main lines of such work can involve education, group coaching with men aimed at discussing father's importance in childrearing with an emphasis put on the necessity of husband's involvement in this process, as well as father's impact on child's personality development. Such work will improve psychological climate in the family, deepen father's involvement in childrearing, positively influence family role distribution and enable mothers to better balance career and family roles.

Psychological Advice on Gender Identity (discovering, identifying resources of gender identity, their possible application in the family and in career, learning how to reconcile and accept masculine and feminine attributes).

According to some researchers, gender identity includes the following three components: cognitive, that is person's awareness of belonging to a particular gender, of their own gender features, referring to themselves using masculine-feminine attributes; affective, that is attitude towards one's own gender identity and peculiar role behavior by correlating it with masculinity-femininity reference models; behavioral, that is presenting oneself as a representative of a gender group, as well as resolving identity crises by choosing behavior in accordance with personally relevant goals and values [5; 11].

Main lines of work for psychologists are aimed at the following components: person's awareness of their own gender identity attributes, correlation between masculinity and femininity, identifying desirable attributes; studying attitude and emotional response to peculiarities of gender identity, its acceptance; techniques for presentation of one's own gender identity, using its resources in professional and household spheres.

In line with current trends in gender studies, it is advisable to study personal gender experience in the paradigm of social constructivism. This approach is instrumental in analyzing how masculinity and femininity develop and are recreated, studying gender culture, development of gender attributes in everyday life, as well as ways of obtaining knowledge about them. In addition, social constructivism leaves opportunities for conceptualizing changes in social and cultural experience, which fixes gender patterns that impede the processes of self-identification [18]. According to social constructivism, the most effective study techniques are those that study peculiarities of personal gender experience creation and interpretation. These techniques include narrative techniques (writing mini-essays, autobiographies, etc.).

In general, the following social and psychological methods can be used to study person's gender identity: focus group; in-depth interview; content analysis, semantic differential technique; psychodiagnostic testing, questionnaires; projective techniques, verbal communication methods [5].

Psychologists stress the importance of using Thematic Analysis as a qualitative method for studying gender identity in a feminist paradigm [15; 19].

To study and adjust person's attitude towards dominant gender role standards, gender-role conflict, in particular in men, it is recommended to use film therapy (watching films on a particular topic and analyzing them), since the film is defined as a case, a metaphor, a symbolism, experience. Films help see the situation, the problem in the context of the environment, provide a detached view, visualize characters' emotions, their experiences, relying also on sound effects, besides, you can observe other viewers' response while watching.

It is important to note that psychological work with gender identity is relevant not only for solving gender-role conflict, but also for shaping career orientation, working out a plan for achieving a career.

Developing Role Competence. According to P. Hornostai, role competence is the ability to deal with everyday challenges associated with role behavior or its tools; it is part and parcel of person's life competence. The role competence structure includes role variability (the variety of person's psychological roles, the wealth of their role behavior), role flexibility (the ability to easily change roles), role depth (the role deep structure development, relying in role behavior not only on role expectations of the people around, but also on personal beliefs, peculiarities of one's own identity, in particular, gender, self-concept), ability to decenter roles and accept other people's roles, which promotes adaptation and person's socialization, contributes to avoiding or solving role conflicts. Effective methods to develop role competence are psychodrama, role play [1].

Time Management. Time management involves exercising by women and men conscious control of their time, analyzing its use and efficiency level of spending time on certain things. Application of time management techniques will enable men and women to more effectively balance their occupational, family, social and gender roles. Time management will be the most effective when dealing with family -to-ca- reer conflict in women and career-to-family conflict in men. On top of that, time-management techniques help to arrange your own activities and living space, contributing to successful career in general.

When managing your time it is important to realize primary and secondary goals, focus your efforts on the primary goals that will help achieve your life aim and career plan. It is worth noting tasks which in fact are ineffective, unnecessary but time-consuming. There are various time management techniques.

Challenging Gender Stereotypes involves public awareness campaign aimed at identifying and studying gender stereotypes of a certain community alongside with analyzing one's own gender stereotypes, examining their sources, etc.; developing wider concepts and beliefs with regard to gender-sensitive issues in the workplace; developing gender tolerance [4; 9].

Organizational level involves introducing gender-specific approach in corporate staff psychological coaching [6]; developing family-friendly workplace culture.

It is a question of arranging within an organization conditions to support young parents, in particular mothers. In order to implement such conditions, the following aspects should be taken into account:

1. Creating flexible work opportunities (if possible due to organization's specific business), opportunity to combine work at the office with work from home.

2. Part-time employment of working mothers which involves developing criteria for assessing performance and labor productivity in accordance with the amount of work done (labor remuneration for the tasks performed, but not for the number of hours). Part-time employment may involve the same workload as the full-time work alongside with shorter hours [10].

According to European studies, organizations are starting to consider female workers and single mothers, as their business demands flexibility during negotiations and task performance and management believes that such women can provide this flexibility. Family-friendly policies that allow for flexible working hours can help some employees, especially women, to balance their work and family needs, lightening the load of a variety of roles. For example, there is evidence that flexible hours along with supervisors' support, can increase employees' sense of control over work and family requirements, which reduces family conflicts and stress. Research shows that men increasingly value their family roles and want to be fully engaged in family life, reducing women's load [12].

3. Affordable and accessible childcare would enable families to better balance work and care responsibilities. On-site child care facility for mothers to leave their children and be able to visit them during their lunch hour without going a long way to the kindergarten might reduce the stress and disturbance of a working mother.

4. A more progressive parental leave system would enable parents to make choices which work best for them and their families [7].

5. It is also important to comply with current laws, which provide for employment conditions of young mothers who have children under the age of three, especially in private companies, where employers do not always want to hire a young mother.

6. M. Tkalych suggests gender-specific approach in corporate staff psychological coaching based on securing equal rights and opportunities for personal and professional growth of employees, regardless of their gender or affiliation with a particular gender group . To implement such approach means making values, needs and experience of the staff part and parcel of the corporate culture concept. Such corporate culture will promote employees' equal rights and opportunities in their work and career development, contribute to better balance of their work and personal, family and other spheres of life. It will also help remove gender inequality during recruitment, setting wages, promotion [6]. To avoid gender-role conflict, particular attention should be paid to one of the implementation conditions for this approach, gender-specific work-life balance plan, which includes the following components [6]:

• social safety net for corporate staff;

• organizational and individual activities and strategies to maintain work -family (personal life) / family (personal life)-work balance;

• training development program for corporate staff gender interaction, that is, gender-specific approach of staff psychological group coaching, which involves simulating interaction situations, equivalent to real life relations in the organization among gender group members and in intergroup relationship which cannot be handled with the help of standard staff coaching practices, as well as active involvement of training participants in analysis and solution of gender interaction situations.

Key responsibilities of a corporate psychologist include the following tasks: to help managers realize difficulties, including psychological ones, that young parents face while trying to balance their family and career roles, understand other employers' gender-role conflict manifestation forms, outline possible ways to manage such issues and include them in the corporate culture.

Essentially, major psychological approaches to gender-role conflict are to study, prevent and correct its manifestations. These approaches include two levels: personal and organizational. Personal level involves generating achievement motivation and psychological personality-congruent criteria for success; developing emotional competence, which involves not only emotional control, but also an adequate display of emotions (especially by men); analyzing career and family values, identifying immediate life goals; analyzing family concepts; family counseling; psychological work with men aimed at maintaining parental identity; developing role competence; time management; psychological analysis of individual gender identity and gender experience; challenging gender stereotypes. Organizational level includes developing family-friendly workplace culture, relying on gender-specific approach to staff coaching.

Conclusions

career psychological motivation gender

This article holds implications for future research. It suggests that it is important to analyze factors contributing to successful personal gender -role conflict management and develop psychological coaching program to manage gender -role conflict in career development.

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