Conflict, outcome, and perception of women’s roles

The study was designed to investigate perception of conflict and outcome across women’s roles. A variation of the Thematic Apperception Test was used. Female graduate students (N = 93) wrote stories to three pictorial cues. Each cue depicted women in a role: Girl friend/wife role, worker role, mother role. The 279 protocols (93 Ss × 3 cues = 279) were coded blindly for existence of conflict and evaluation of outcome. Interrater reliability was 96%. Cochran’s Q analyses indicate that more stories with conflict were told to the girl friend/wife role and more stories with negative outcomes were told in response to the mother role cue. The results suggest that educated adult women perceive the worker role as the least problematic. Further, chi-square analyses indicate that the perceptions are independent of respondent’s age, marital status, or maternal status.