ABSTRACT This cross-sectional survey of 1498 married female primary school teachers in Enugu state, Nigeria was used to investigate the association between work-family conflict and shifted gender roles. Gender role shift was measured as female breadwinning and shared house chores roles with husband/partner. Pre-validated work and family conflict scale, and a structured questionnaire were used for data collection. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients of the instruments were 0.913 and 0.871 respectively. Data were analysed using IBM-SPSS version 23, using percentage and listwise binary logistic regression. The results showed that 37.2% of the women were family breadwinners and 18.2% reported that they shared house chores with their husbands/partners. Work-family conflict was found to be 21.6% prevalent. Being a breadwinner increased the odds (OR > 1.00) of work-family conflict, while shared responsibility for household chores decreased the odds (OR < 1.00) of work-family conflict. Breadwinners had higher odds (OR = 4.77; CI = 2.61 - 8.73) of work-family conflict than non-breadwinners. Women whose partners shared in-house chores were less likely (OR = 0.31; CI = 0.20- 0.51) to experience conflict. Gender role shift, therefore, has implications for work-family imbalances among women in the primary school teaching profession in Nigeria.
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