Gender Ideology and Marital Satisfaction on Husbands with

Working Wives

Tesi Hermaleni

Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Universitas Negeri Padang, Indonesia

Keywords: Gender Ideology, Marital Satisfaction, Husband with a Working Wife.

Abstract: The increasing divorce case indicates the lack of marital satisfaction and much of the divorce experienced

by working wives. The change in the role of husband and wife in the society of the current industry affects

gender ideology and the satisfaction of marriage. This condition implies more research on gender ideology

and marriage satisfaction to couples with a working wife. This study aims to see gender ideology and

husband marriage satisfaction with a working wife. The research method is a quantitative research method

with the number of respondents as many as 48 people. The results show that husbands with a working wife

have a high-quality marriage satisfaction, having a gender ideology that tends to be traditional.

1 INTRODUCTION

A family is a fundamental unit in the efforts to build

nation-generation characters. A weak family will

result in the low quality of the nation's successor

generations. A good family indeed starts from a

healthy and happy marriage. Ironically this time, the

divorce rate in Indonesia is getting higher.

Based on the data of the Directorate General of

Religious Justice of the Supreme Court (2018), the

divorce rate each year is constantly increasing, and

the average increases annually by 3%. The

occurrence of divorce is an indicator of the low

satisfaction of marriage. According to DeMoss

(Yedirir & Hamarta, 2015), marriage satisfaction

indicates a strong marriage and indicator in the

marriage that lasts Long-term. Wedding satisfaction

is a condition where married couples are satisfied

and happy with each other (Khalatbari et al., 2013).

Hawkins and Olson expressed another opinion in

(Srisusanti & Zulkaida, 2013) that marriage is a

subjective feeling that can be a happy feeling to the

experience of a married couple in her marriage with

considering all aspects of the marriage. By

definition, it can also be concluded that the

satisfaction of marriage is subjective. The aspects of

the marriage referred to in this study include;

Personality Issues, Equalitarian Roles,

Communication, Conflict Resolution, Financial

Management, Leisure Activities, Sexual

Relationship, Children and Marriage, Family and

Friends, Religious Orientation.

One of the crucial factors influencing the

satisfaction of marriage is the sharing of roles in the

household duties that are equally agreed upon by the

couple. The role-sharing process to match what the

pair is expecting depends heavily on gender

ideology. Gender ideology is an individual attitude

toward how women and Men should act (Helgeson,

2012). Gender ideology consists of two types,

namely traditional and egalitarian. Traditional

gender ideology is an attitude that emphasizes the

role of working men and women at home or, in other

words, having more power than women. In contrast,

the ideology of egalitarian gender, power holders in

Households may be flexible (Helgeson, 2012).

The study results related to ideology and the role

of gender by (Sayer, England, Allison, & Kangas,

2011) on the Predictor factor of divorce between a

man and a woman were found differently.

Interestingly, when men do not work, couples will

choose to divorce or leave a wedding, while for men,

the job status of a couple is not a predictor factor

they decide on a divorce. From this research, it can

be concluded that women have high hopes for the

gender role of their spouse in the household than

men. Meanwhile, research on the satisfaction of the

marriage reveals that when family conflicts occur

and the gender work ideology should not be an

intermediary factor in the satisfaction of the wife's

Hermaleni, T.

Gender Ideology and Marital Satisfaction on Husbands with Working Wives.

DOI: 10.5220/0010808500003347

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Psychological Studies (ICPsyche 2021), pages 39-42

ISBN: 978-989-758-580-7

marriage (Lynn et al., 2013). On the contrary,

husbands' gender ideology affects marriage to

marital satisfaction when family and occupation

conflicts occur.

Today, the community has changed the system of

agrarian society to become a community industry. It

also resulted in the changing role of the spouse in

the family. In the Industrial society, the husband

works outside the house, and the wife is in charge of

home care. The wife's industrial community also

works outside the house to petrify the family

economy. The role of women today has undergone a

very significant shift. These findings can be seen

from the last few years that the number of women in

the workforce has increased (Tjaja, 2000). The

change in couples' role in the family today demands

a change in the way of thinking about how they are

supposed to and certainly also affects their marriage

satisfaction. Based on this, there is a need for

research on gender ideology and marriage

satisfaction.

Previous research related to gender ideology and

marital satisfaction has not been found much, but

researchers have conducted similar research with the

subject of working wives. Research on gender

ideology and marital satisfaction from the husband's

point of view has not been found. Therefore,

researchers are interested in researching gender

ideology and marital satisfaction in husbands with

working wives.

2 METHOD

This research is a quantitative study with a sample of

48 research husband with a working wife.The

measuring instruments used in this study use Likert

model scales. The gender ideology scale used in this

study was the scale of Kerr and Holden's. A short

version of Gender Role Beliefs Scale (GRBS)

consisting of 10 item (J. Brown & Gladstone, 2012).

This range of gender ideology scale R values move

from 0,290-0,650 and the alpha coefficient of

Cronbach 0674. While the marital satisfaction scale

is a scale from (Hermaleni, 2018) which consists of

43 items with an r value range of 0.263-0.832. The

scale is filled out online by the research subject. In

this study the data were analyzed by descriptive

statistics.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Based on the following research data in Table 1

condition of marital satisfaction could be seen.

Table 1: Marriage satisfaction score category on husband

and wife working.

Score

Category

Percentage

(%)

170 < X Very High 9 18,75%

142 < X ≤ 170 High 29 60,42%

114 < X ≤142 Mediu

8 16,67%

86 < X ≤ 114 Low 2 4,16%

86 ≤ X Very Low 0 0

Total 49 100%

Based on Table 1, it can be concluded that this

study sample tends to have high marital satisfaction.

This finding means that husbands with working

wives tend to settle for their spouses and marriages.

Table 2: Category scores aspect of marriage satisfaction

on husbands with working wives.

Aspect Hypothetic Empirical

Mean Mean

Personality issues 15 13,73

Equalitarian roles 12 13,10

Communication 15 18,80

Conflict resolution 9 11,92

Financial

management

Leisure activities 15

16,96

Sexual relationship 12 15,85

Children & marriage 9 9,73

Family & friends 15 19,46

Religious orientation 15 19,75

Based on Table 2 above, it can be seen that only

in the Personality issues aspect score mean lower

empirically than the hypothetic mean. This finding

means that the research samples feel less satisfied

with the personality characteristics of the partner.

Four aspects have a high enough hypothetic and

empiric mean range. The first high ranges of mean

ICPsyche 2021 - International Conference on Psychological Studies

empiric scores exist in the Religious orientation

aspect, which means that the research sample is

satisfied with the effectiveness of the partner and the

value of the religious value that has been carried out

in his marriage. The research sample matches and

satisfaction with the quality of the relationship with

the spouse's family and interaction with his partner

friends. The fear is the Communication aspect,

which means that the research sample is satisfied

with the communication pattern with the couple.

Table 3: Gender ideology spread husband with wife

working.

Types of Gender

Ideology

Amount

Traditional 28

Egaliter 20

Based on Table 3, it can be seen that most of this

research sample has the type of gender ideology that

traditional type. This finding means that husbands

have the perspective that wives should carry out

their roles at home as women should, and husbands

should work outside the home.

4 CONCLUSION

The results show that husbands with working wives

have high-quality marriage satisfaction. Based on

the aspect of marital satisfaction, it is found that a

husband with a wife who works is less satisfied with

the personality characteristics of the couple.

However, in several studies, it was found that

personality is one aspect that is strongly related to a

husband's marital satisfaction, and a proactive

personality was found to be significantly related to a

husband's marital satisfaction (Ahuluheluw, 2019).

The results also show that husbands with working

wives feeling very satisfied in terms of religious

spouses and religious applications in their marital life

has a satisfaction also in terms of the match with

family and friends mates and has a positive

communication with the couple. In the aspect of the

division of roles, they feel pretty satisfied and follow

the division of roles on the condition of the working

wife. Based on satisfaction with the division of this

role, it can be interpreted that the husband judges that

the wife can carry out the role that should be carried

out at home to the maximum, even though they also

work outside the home.

The researcher also analyzes gender ideology

data on husbands and wives who work in terms of

education level. From the results of the analysis, it

was found that husbands with higher levels of

education tend to be of the egalitarian type. This

finding means that the husband does not impose too

much on his partner according to gender, such as the

wife does not have to cook, the wife can work, etc.

Husbands with lower education tend to be more

traditional and demand the role of the wife to carry

out roles according to their gender roles. This result

can also be seen from research (Sayer et al., 2011)

that women have higher expectations of the gender

role of their partners in the household than men.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thanks to the research subject that participated in

data collection, so the research has been carried out

well.

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