Title: Understanding the Role of Cultural Values in the Experience of Work-Family Conflict Among Professional Latinas
Description: The majority of empirical work regarding the phenomenon of work-family conflict has focused on the experiences of White, middle-class, professional women. While Latinos represent the fastest growing segment of workers in the U.S. labor force, and professional employment the fastest growing segment of occupation type, the experiences of professional Latinas, for whom the dominant cultural values may not be salient, remains largely unexplored. The influence of cultural context variables on experiences of work-family conflict has yet to be understood. The present study surveyed 203 professional Latinas with children. It was expected that Latino cultural values (i.e., collectivism, familism) and traditional gender role attitudes (i.e., marianismo) would have both a main effect on levels of work-family conflict and a moderating effect on the relationship between job and family stressors and work-family conflict, such that the relationship between both kinds of stressors and the two forms of conflict (i.e. work-family conflict; family-work conflict) would be stronger for those participants who also endorsed greater levels of individualism and familism, and for those who adhered to more traditional gender role attitudes and who experienced greater conflict in relation to their gender role attitudes.

As expected, hierarchical multiple regressions revealed significant main effects for job and family stressors and individualism on levels of work-family conflict. Contrary to the hypotheses, no main effects were found for collectivism, familism, or gender role attitudes. Also as expected, results indicated that collectivism appeared to moderate the relationship between family stressors and family-work conflict and familism moderated the relationships between job and family stressors and work-family conflict. Contrary to hypothesized relationships, results did not reveal a significant moderating effect for gender role attitudes. However, as predicted , the level of conflict that participants reported experiencing in regards to their gender role attitudes did appear to significantly moderate the relationship between job and family stressors and work-family conflict, such that these relationships were stronger for those participants who endorsed high levels of conflict about their gender role attitudes. Implications of these findings for future research, training, and practice were discussed.