Attitudes towards women and perceived marital adjustment among dual career couples

• Main Author: Weibelzahl, Timothy James
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/5046

This study sought to examine the relationship between attitudes toward women's contemporary roles and perceived marital adjustment for married couples who were attempting to construct a dual career lifestyle. A purposive sample of sixty-seven partners involved in a dual career marriage was drawn from the lower mainland of British Columbia, Canada. The sample was divided into two groups, distressed and non distressed based on the participants scores on the Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Both the couple and the individual were the units of analysis. Their attitudes toward women were then tested on the Attitudes Toward Women Scale. Participants were mailed two copies of each inventory for husband-wife pairs to be filled out independently. Males were found to be more traditionally oriented in their attitudes toward women's contemporary roles than were females. Males were especially more traditional in respect to their views on women's achievement and family roles. There was also a moderately strong positive correlation (Pearson r) between all of the subjects' scores on the Dyadic Adjustment Scale and their scores on the Attitudes Toward Women Scale. However, there was no support for earlier research on gender role incongruence and marital adjustment.