The problem of the role-based intrapersonal conflict of a working woman.

Pachkolina Anastasiya Vladimirovna Postgraduate Student, Department of Pedagogical and Applied Psychology, Samara branch of the State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education "Moscow City Pedagogical University" 443068, Russia, Samarskaya oblast', g. Samara, ul. Novo Sadovaya, 106 k 106, of. 316 stasya-lu@yandex.ru

In European society, the problem of professional self-realization of women began to be considered from the second half of the XIX century, before that period, a woman was pushed to work outside the family by economic situation and need. The XX century is revolutionary in all spheres of life, starting with scientific and technical and continuing with cultural and socio-economic spheres. It was then that the role of women increased in all areas of society, expanding her rights and freedoms. The transformation of the social structure has invariably affected the inner psychological life of both the woman herself and the family. Such changes, in addition to positive trends in personality development, have led to a number of problems, which were studied by researchers of the twentieth century and continue by scientists of the XXI century.

The study of the problem of the role conflict of a working woman in Western psychology began with the research of the 1970s. Social psychologists L. Hoffman, D. Nevil and S. Damico ^[18] put forward an initial hypothesis based on the assumption that women experience additional stress and anxiety while performing professional roles. Empirical studies have shown a slightly different picture: not all women experience role conflict associated with the emergence of new social roles. From this it follows that the problem of the role conflict of a working woman contains more complex and ambiguous components and causes.

Further studies by L. Hoffman, D. Nevil and S. Damico established a number of factors contributing to the emergence of role conflict in working women, which include:

1) chronic feeling of lack of time;

2) performing domestic roles associated with a sense of interference from professional roles, as well as the reverse situation when performing a professional role;

3) a sense of guilt caused by a feeling of insufficient attention to the family due to the need to perform professional roles;

4) lack of support in the desire for professional realization on the part of the husband ^[10].

In 1986, E. Haavio-Manila ^[17] conducted a study and published it as part of the WHO conference. It covered working and non-working women in European countries, where parameters were used to identify characteristics such as physical and psychological health, as well as the level of anxiety. The results showed that the period when a woman is forced to stay at home and run a household coincided with an increase in the level of physical and mental illnesses. And the period of combining family and professional responsibilities is marked by an increase in anxiety without harming mental and physical health. E. Haavio-Manila concludes that financial independence and social activity outside the home are extremely important for women. Based on this study, I would like to note that it is impossible to ignore the indicator of an increase in the level of anxiety of working women and the need for socio-psychological work in this direction.

P. Newberry, M. Weissman and D.K. Myers ^[19], conducting a study aimed at determining the degree of mental well-being of working and non-working women, found that working women are more satisfied with the results of their work than women engaged only in the conduct of life within the family. The results of the data obtained can be explained through a system of labor motivation, which is associated with meeting the needs presented by A. Maslow ^[10]. In Western culture, modern women rely not only on the satisfaction of basic needs, but also prioritize the needs of the "high level", which are based on respect and self-expression. Social psychologist Frederick Hertzberg ^[16] complements in the motivation of work such components as responsibility, recognition, achievement and promotion. Household chores and taking care of the family in modern society are often not associated with the success of the individual. Often a woman is faced with a stereotype, which is based on the idea that a female housewife has a lower intellectual and social status.

Another important result of the research conducted by P. Newberry, M. Weissman, D.K. Myers ^[19] is that a woman's professional activity affects the family and the psyche of a woman indirectly through the transfer of tension from the work sphere to the sphere of personal relationships. Thus, a certain contradiction has been revealed, in which, on the one hand, women experience greater satisfaction when performing professional roles, at the same time, the family is an area to which stress is transferred. Women who focus only on housework, as a rule, are deprived of a space into which tension and a sense of dissatisfaction are transferred.

The role conflict of a working woman in Russian psychology was initially considered in the context of the problem of "double load" and was studied through the prism of sociology, economics and demography. The need to study the psychological mechanisms of the emergence and resolution of the role conflict of a working woman is found in the works written in the 80s of the XX century. N.G. Polonskaya, having investigated the problem of neuroticization of women, found that the main neurotic factor is the lack of "moral satisfaction" ^[4]. Further studies of the psychological characteristics of working women are found in the 1988 article published by Yu.E. Alyoshina and E.V. Lectorskaya ^[1]. In it, the authors are the first to draw attention to the need to study this problem within the framework of psychological sciences. They found that success in family and professional spheres contributes to the reduction of role conflict in women, and the life situations of women with different severity of role conflict differ significantly, for example, the attitude of the husband to the professional activities of the wife largely determines the depth and degree of her role conflict.

Continuing the research of Y.E. Alyoshina and E.V. Lectorskaya, O.A. Gavrilitsa examines in more detail the theoretical problem of the role conflict of a working woman and defines it in the context of the subject of research as one of the varieties of inter-role intrapersonal conflict of personality ^[4]. In her opinion, the role conflict of a working woman is associated with the need to perform a large number of diverse, often incompatible roles in which a woman is involved. O. A. Gavrilitsa's research indicates that the role conflict of a working woman has a complex and ambiguous structure, the causes of its occurrence and the course of development largely depend on the interweaving of both personal factors and the characteristics of the close environment. In Russian psychology, O. A. Gavrilitsa's research is the most significant in the study of the role conflict of a working woman, it was conducted more than 20 years ago and is a reference in studies of this kind, but the dynamics of the development of society and personality presupposes the renewal and expansion of research in the field of the role conflict of a working woman.

Back at the end of the XX century, L.A. Vasyunina and Z.A. Khotkina ^[4] saw the solution in reducing the role conflict through improving socio-economic conditions, namely, expanding the service sector, part-time work, working at home and using a PC. A modern woman has access to all of these resources, but in the practice of psychological counseling of women in medical and social institutions of the city of Samara for the period 2009-2021, it was noted that the majority of women raising preschool and school-age children expressed the idea that they experience internal stress when combining work at home and raising a child. A survey conducted among 40 women at the end of 2021 revealed the following trends. Despite the availability of good household appliances and the possibility of working in a free schedule, women complain of a feeling of lack of time for important, in their opinion, areas of life. 37% of women with higher education noted that they resort to the help of a nanny or a housemaid. But at the same time they are dissatisfied with their own level of development and reflect on what opportunities for self-realization are available to them. Also, 75% of the women surveyed noted that their social circle had significantly narrowed, and at some stage they began to feel that they lacked the strength to realize both a professional role and a maternal one. Thus, the improvement of social and living conditions and the emergence of new opportunities in the service sector cannot be the main factor in solving the problem of role conflict.

We conducted a preliminary study, the purpose of which was to determine the level of role conflict among working women and to identify a problem area that requires more detailed study.

The objectives of the study are to assess the severity of the role conflict and its dependence on the locus of the role conflict, as well as dependence on the distribution of internal family roles. The following diagnostic materials were used in the study:

1. A questionnaire aimed at identifying socio-demographic and biographical data.

2. Role conflict: O.A. Gavrilitsa's methodology ^{[4, p. 150]}.

3. The method of measuring the locus of the role conflict of P.P. Ermine ^{[6, p. 45]}.

4. Questionnaire "Family roles", the author of the modification – A.V. Chernikov ^{[12, p.152]}

Methods of parametric and nonparametric statistics were used in statistical data processing. Information processing was carried out using statistical packages SPSS Statistics 22, Microsoft Excel.

Characteristics of the sample.

The study involved 35 women aged 24 to 46 years, the average age was 37.2 years. All women work, 31 are married, 4 are divorced. All have higher education and live in Russian cities. All respondents have satisfactory social and living conditions. 16 have two children, 16 women have one child each, 4 women have 3 or more children. The age of children is from 2 to 23 years, each woman is engaged in the upbringing of a minor. Preschoolers are brought up by 16 women, schoolchildren -19 women, teenagers - 15 women.

The main reason for encouraging work is called: "I work because I need money. But at the same time, I wouldn't want to not work either" – 16 women (44.4%); "I feel that I can realize my intellectual and creative potential" – 22 women (61.1%); "I like to feel independent" – 7 women (19.4%); "I don't like my job, but I need money" – 3 women (8.3%). Thus, most women consider professional activity for themselves as a significant component in life that helps in the realization of certain personal competencies.

Results and discussions.

When analyzing the results obtained using the methodology of diagnosing the "Level of role conflict" by O.A. Gavrilitsa, the structure of the severity of role conflict among working women mothers was obtained. Analyzing the level of role conflict, we took the sum of three scales: 1st scale - "The degree of interference in the implementation of working roles by family roles, and vice versa"; 2nd scale – "The guilt that a woman feels in front of her family because she works"; 3rd scale - "Indicator the degree of disapproval of the husband that the wife works."

To confirm the hypothesis that the level of intrapersonal conflict of a woman depends on the locus of conflict, as well as on the number of roles performed by a woman in family relationships, we carried out a statistical analysis using calculations of the Spearman rs correlation coefficient ^{[13, p.221]} and analyzed the following relationships:

1. The general level of role conflict according to the methodology of O.A. Gavrilitsa and the locus of conflict according to the methodology of P.P. Ermine.

2. The level of role conflict on the scales:The 1st scale is "The degree of interference in the implementation of working roles by family roles, and vice versa"; the 2nd scale is "The feeling of guilt that a woman feels in front of her family because she works"; the 3rd scale is "An indicator of the degree of disapproval by her husband that her wife works" by the locus of conflict.

3. The level of role conflict and the number of family roles performed.

The analysis of correlations between the locus of role conflict and the degree of role conflict showed the presence of reliable correlations of the following scales:

–negative (inverse) correlation on the scales of external conflict and the 3rd scale "Indicator of the degree of disapproval of the husband that the wife works" (rs= – 0.326?0.01);

–negative (inverse) correlation on the scales of external conflict and the degree of role conflict (rs= – 0.249?0.05);

–positive correlation between the 3rd scale "The indicator of the degree of disapproval of the husband that the wife works" and the number of role-interactions (rs= 0.257?0.05);

–positive correlation between the 3rd scale "Indicator of the degree of disapproval of the husband that the wife works" and the number of family roles (rs= 0.298?0.05).

Thus, the more pronounced the external strategy of the role conflict, the lower the level of disapproval on the part of the spouse. This is due to the fact that a woman, applying a more flexible strategy in relationships, enlists more support from her husband. The data also showed that women with an esternal locus of conflict are more involved in the performance of family roles and interaction roles. Apparently, this behavior strategy helps to include your partner in an active relationship, which helps to reduce tension in the relationship.

Conclusions.

Analysis of the results of the study showed that the structure of the role conflict of a working woman-mother has a complex nature and contains many components, which creates the need for a more detailed and detailed study.

Based on the above, it is possible to distinguish the presence of the following conditions in the formation of the role conflict of a working woman:

– high, unrealistic demands on family roles from the social environment;

– lack of skills in maintaining interpersonal contacts and the inability to independently include a spouse (partner) in relationships aimed at supporting and participating in family life;

– lack of timely psychological assistance, a limited number of programs aimed at supporting women who have difficulties in combining different roles.

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