Gender Ideology and Work–Family Conflict: A Global Comparative Analysis

Reconciliation of work and family roles has become a central issue for advancing women’s empowerment, gender equality, and sustainable family systems worldwide. While the previous research has examined the ‘work–family interface’, multi-country evidence on the link between gender ideology (GI) and work–family conflict (WFC), remains inconclusive. As GI influences occupational choice and household division of labour, this study investigates a critical question: whether individuals with traditional gender beliefs experience higher WFC than those with egalitarian views. Using data from the ISSP 2012 module ‘Family and Changing Gender Roles’, we find a positive association between GI scores and WFC, indicating that respondents with traditional beliefs are more likely to report WFC than those with egalitarian ideology. While the findings remain robust across multiple robustness checks, yet the magnitude of the association is far from uniform, showing clear heterogeneity across individual factors such as sex and education, as well as community contexts, including place and region of residence.