Marital Satisfaction among Married Women in Korea

Abstract

The purposes of this study are to investigate marital satisfaction according to demographic characteristic, division of household labor, and awareness of gender discrimination, and to explore influences of demographic and other variables on marital satisfaction. Social statistics survey data which collected in 1998 by ministry of statistics were used for secondary analysis of this study. Marital satisfaction was measured by questionnaire which was consisted in 7 items, including satisfaction with general family life, relationship with their own parent and parent-in-law, relationship with brothers and sisters, relationship with their children, and economic living status. These are measured by 5-point Likert scale. Independent variables are age, education, employment status, having their own house or not, No. of children under school age, parents living or not, perception of sexual discrimination, and division of household labor. The findings of this study show that there are significant differences of marital satisfaction by all independents variables, and all independent variables except employment have significant influences on marital satisfaction. People who are younger, received higher education, have their own house, have more children under schoolage and whose parent are living in the world, show higher marital satisfaction. The more husbands participate to household labor, the better marital satisfaction. In case of perception of sexual discrimination, main effect is not significant, but interaction effect with age is significant. Interaction effect between age and education is also significant. 32.52% of the variance in marital satisfaction were accounted for by these variables.