The Effect of Women's Employment on Marital Satisfaction of Men

Family is the most important social unit. Marital satisfaction among the couples plays a very important role in formation and continuity of family. Several factors have influence on the marital satisfaction and intimacy in couples. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of employment status of women on their husbands’ marital satisfaction in the city of Kermanshah, 2014. A cross-sectional design was used to conduct the study. Sampling was performed in two stages. At first stage cluster sampling and at the second stage simple random sampling was used to select 250 male teachers from the high schools in three educational districts in Kermanshah city. A questionnaire contains of demographic information and Enrich inventory was used to collect the data. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, Chi square test, t-test and correlation coefficients in SPSS v.18. P-values less than 0.05 were considered as statistically significant. There was a significant difference in marital satisfaction of men with employed wives and marital satisfaction of men who are living with unemployed wives (p = 0.00). Also, results showed a significant correlation between marital satisfaction and the level of education in men with employed women (p=0.008). In contrast, there was no significant correlation between educational level and marital satisfaction in men with unemployed spouses. Findings showed that in men with employed wives, unlike men who had unemployed wives, there was significant correlation between age at marriage time (p=0.003) and age difference between the couples (p=0.007) with marital satisfaction. Also, in the men who had employed wives, there was a significant relationship between their work experience and the level of marital satisfaction (p=0.002). According to the findings, there was a significant relationship between marital satisfaction and its various aspects among men with employed wives. However, this study supports that the men who are living with their employed wives have greater marital satisfaction rather than the men who are living with their unemployed housekeeper wives.