Gender Role Mindsets: A Lens for Examining Why Women Still Can’t “Have It All”

Gender role mindset reflects the extent to which traditional gender roles, with men as breadwinners and women as caretakers, are held to be fixed or malleable. Across 2 studies, we examine the relationships between individuals’ gender role mindset and work-family conflict, and its downstream consequences for both job and relationship satisfaction. Undergraduate female (but not male) business students holding a fixed gender role mindset anticipate more work-family conflict. We replicate this finding in a sample of high-achieving dual career couples. We find an indirect effect of gender role mindset on job and relationship satisfaction measures, through work-family conflict, moderated by gender. Our findings suggest that espousing a growth gender role mindset could uniquely reduce work-family conflict for women and improve job and relationship satisfaction.