Role identity and role conflict among dual-career, non-career employed, and stay-at-home wives

The current study explored the ways in which women organized their roles and how they perceived themselves within their roles. This study also explored the relationship between role conflict and role-related identity. Because of the variety of roles that women occupy and perform, this study focused on how vocational status might play a part in how women perceived their role-related identities. As predicted, findings indicated that women arrange their role-related identity in a different ways, such as hierarchical, mult-role, and holistic. Of these three ways women organize their roles, hierarchical was the most common among the whole sample and in each vocational status (i.e., dual-career, noncareer employed, and stay-at-home). Differences in the most predominant role for women who were had hierarchical organized role-related identity structures were also found. Contrary to predictions, women in the multi-role group experienced more role conflict than women in either hierarchical or holistic groups.